Differences in adrenocortical responses between urban and rural burrowing owls: poorly-known underlying mechanisms and their implications for conservation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal/interrenal (HPA) axis of vertebrates integrates external information and orchestrates responses to cope with energy-demanding and stressful events through changes in circulating glucocorticoid levels. Urbanization exposes animals to a wide variety of ever-changing stimuli caused by human activities that may affect local wildlife populations. Here, we empirically tested the hypothesis that urban and rural owls (Athene cunicularia) show different adrenocortical responses to stress, with urban individuals showing a reduced HPA-axis response compared to rural counterparts to cope with the high levels of human disturbance typical of urban areas. We applied a standard capture-restraint protocol to measure baseline levels and stress-induced corticosterone (CORT) responses. Urban and rural owls showed similar circulating baseline CORT levels. However, maximum CORT levels were attained earlier and were of lower magnitude in urban compared to rural owls, which showed a more pronounced and long-lasting response. Variability in CORT responses was also greater in rural owls and contained the narrower variability displayed by urban ones. These results suggest that only individuals expressing low-HPA-axis responses can thrive in cities, a pattern potentially mediated by three alternative and non-exclusive hypotheses: phenotypic plasticity, natural selection and matching habitat choice. Due to their different conservation implications, we recommend further research to properly understand wildlife responses to humans in an increasingly urbanized world.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".