Effects of Maternal Stress on Measures of Anxiety and Fearfulness in Different Strains of Laying Hens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Maternal stress can affect the offspring of birds, possibly due to hormone deposition in the egg. Additionally, phenotypic diversity resulting from domestication and selection for productivity has created a variety of poultry lines that may cope with stress differently. In this study, we investigated the effects of maternal stress on the behaviour of different strains of laying hens and the role of corticosterone as its mediator. For this, fertilized eggs of 5 genetic lines — 2 brown (Brown 1 & 2), 2 white (White 1 & 2) and 1 pure line White Leghorn — were reared identically as 4 flocks of 27 birds (24F: 3M) per strain. Each strain was equally separated into 2 groups: Maternal Stress (“MS”), where hens were subjected to a series of daily acute psychological stressors for 8 days before egg collection, and “Control,” which received routine husbandry. Fertile eggs from both treatments were collected at 3 different ages forming different offspring groups that were treated as replicates in time; additional eggs from Control were injected either with corticosterone diluted in a vehicle solution (“CORT”) or just “Vehicle”. Eggs from each replicate were incubated, hatched, and offspring (N=1919) were brooded under identical conditions. To measure the effects of maternal stress on anxiety-like and fear behaviour, offspring were subjected to a social isolation test (SI) between 5 to 10 days of age, and a tonic immobility test (TI) at 9 weeks of age. Compared to Control, MS decreased the number of distress vocalizations emitted by White 2 in SI. No effects of MS were observed in TI, and no effects of CORT were observed in any tests. Overall, brown lines vocalized more in SI and remained in TI for a longer duration than white strains, suggesting genetic differences in fear behaviour. Females vocalized more than males in TI and showed a trend towards significance for the same trait in SI. Overall, results suggest that the effects of maternal stress on fearfulness are not directly mediated by corticosterone. Moreover, it highlights behavioural differences across various strains of laying hens, suggesting that fear response is highly dependent on genotype.
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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 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".