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Stressed tadpoles mount more efficient glucocorticoid negative feedback in anthropogenic habitats due to phenotypic plasticity
- Source :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Elsevier, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Coping with anthropogenic environmental change is among the greatest challenges faced by wildlife, and endocrine flexibility is a potentially crucial coping mechanism. Animals may adapt to anthropogenic environments by dampening their glucocorticoid stress response, but empirical tests of this hypothesis have provided mixed evidence. An alternative hypothesis is that a non-attenuated stress response and efficient negative feedback are favored in anthropogenic habitats. To test this idea, we non-invasively sampled corticosterone release rates of common toad (Bufo bufo) tadpoles in agricultural, urban, and natural habitats, and quantified their stress response and negative feedback by a standardized stress-and-recovery protocol. We repeated the same sampling with tadpoles raised from eggs from the same ponds in a common-garden experiment to infer if the differences observed between populations in different habitats were due to individual phenotypic plasticity rather than microevolution or transgenerational effects. We found that, compared to tadpoles in natural ponds, urban tadpoles had higher baseline and stressed corticosterone release rates, and tadpoles in agricultural ponds had similar corticosterone release rates but greater stress-induced change, indicating stronger stress responses in both types of anthropogenic habitats. As predicted, tadpoles in both agricultural and urban ponds showed more efficient negative feedback than did tadpoles in natural ponds. Water pollution levels, as indicated by the concentrations of carbamazepine and corticoid-disrupting compounds in pond water, contributed to elevating the stress response regardless of land use. Infection by neither Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis nor Ranavirus was detected in free-living tadpoles. No habitat-related glucocorticoid differences persisted in the common-garden experiment. These results suggest that toad tadpoles in anthropogenic habitats increased their glucocorticoid flexibility via phenotypic plasticity. The coupling of stronger stress response and stronger negative feedback in these habitats supports the importance of rapidly “turning on and off” the stress response as a mechanism for coping with anthropogenic environmental change.<br />The study was supported by a Fulbright Research Grant to CRG, and by the NRDI Fund of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (grants "OTKA"-115402 and 2019-2.1.11-TÉT2019-00026 to VB). GINOP-2.3.3-15-2016-00018 supported the UPLCMS/MS analysis.
- Subjects :
- Environmental Engineering
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Environmental change
Ranavirus
Wildlife
Amphibian stress physiology
010501 environmental sciences
Biology
01 natural sciences
chemistry.chemical_compound
Human-induced environmental change
Corticosterone
Environmental Chemistry
Animals
Water pollution
Bufo
Waste Management and Disposal
Glucocorticoids
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
Ecosystem
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Phenotypic plasticity
Ecology
fungi
Microevolution
biology.organism_classification
Pollution
Adaptation, Physiological
Chytridiomycota
Carbamazepine
chemistry
Habitat
Larva
Corticoid-disrupting contaminants
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....29b5a101c020688671af5329e855dd2f