Stress activity is not predictive of coping style in North American red squirrels
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Individuals vary in their behavioral and physiological responses to environmental changes. These behavioral responses are often described as ‘coping styles’ along a proactive-reactive continuum. Studies in laboratory populations often, but not always, find that behavioral responses and physiological responses to stressors covary, where more proactive (more aggressive and active) individuals have a lower physiological stress response, specifically as measured by hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. These studies support the possibility of hormonal pleiotropy underlying the presentation of behaviors that make up the proactive-reactive phenotype. However, recent research in wild populations is equivocal, with some studies reporting the same pattern as found in many controlled laboratory studies, whereas others do not. We tested the hypothesis that physiological and behavioral stress responses are correlated in wild adult North American red squirrels ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus ). We used fecal cortisol metabolites (FCMs) as a non-invasive, integrated estimate of circulating glucocorticoids for our measurement of HPA axis activity. We found that FCM concentrations were not correlated with three measures of behavioral coping styles (activity, aggression, and docility) among individuals. This does not support the hypothesis that hormonal pleiotropy underlies a proactive-reactive continuum of coping styles. Instead, our results support the “two-tier” hypothesis that behavioral and physiological stress responses are independent and uncorrelated traits among individuals in wild populations that experience naturally varying environments rather than controlled environments. If also found in other studies, this may alter our predictions about the evolutionary consequences of behavioral and endocrine coping styles in free-living animals. Significance Statement Individuals vary in how they respond to stressors through behavior and physiology, but we find the two responses are independent in wild animals. Many laboratory studies find links between the behavioral and physiological stress responses, however studies conducted with wild populations are less conclusive. In wild North American red squirrels, independence between the physiological response and behavioral response may allow adaptive responses to a changing environment without pleiotropic constraint.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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) | 0.001 | 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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".