Validation and use of hair cortisol as a measure of chronic stress in eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus)
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stress levels of individuals are documented using glucocorticoid concentrations (including cortisol) in blood, saliva, urine or faeces, which provide information about stress hormones during a short period of time (minutes to days). In mammals, use of hair cortisol analysis allows for the assessment of prolonged stress over weeks and months and provides information on chronic stress levels without bias associated with handling. Here, we validate hair cortisol analysis in wild rodents using exogenous adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH challenge) and apply the technique to evaluate stress in eastern chipmunks inhabiting logged and natural sites. Chipmunks were subjected to a mark-recapture study and injected weekly with ACTH (Synacthen Depot) or saline, with hair being collected at the conclusion of the challenge. Subsequently, faecal and hair samples were collected from chipmunks occupying logged and natural sites to assess the utility of hair cortisol in comparison with faecal cortisol metabolites. Following extraction, cortisol concentrations were quantified in hair and faecal extracts by enzyme immunoassay. Hair cortisol concentrations were significantly elevated in samples from ACTH-injected chipmunks compared with saline-injected control animals (five times higher). Chipmunks inhabiting logged sites had increased faecal cortisol metabolite concentrations compared with those in natural sites, but no differences were observed in hair cortisol concentrations. Faecal cortisol metabolite levels were positively correlated with hair cortisol levels in chipmunks. Hair cortisol levels reflect changes in circulating cortisol levels and can be used to evaluate the adrenal stress response, and thus stress, in natural populations. Nonetheless, because of the differences in the temporal scale of stress that hair and faeces represent, we caution the use of hair cortisol for detecting differences in physiological stress when comparing individuals within populations and suggest that it is best suited to examining population-level differences.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it