The Use of Fish Scale Hormone Concentrations in the Assessment of Long-Term Stress and Associated Adverse Effects on Reproductive Endocrinology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Investigation of the use of fish scales as a medium for non-lethal biomonitoring has recently commenced. Fish scales have been shown to incorporate cortisol over longer periods of time than blood and thus provide a promising means of assessing long-term stress in many species of teleost fish. However, while cortisol is a major mediator of the stress response in fishes, downstream effects of chronic stress on reproduction can involve gonadal steroids such as progesterone and testosterone. The quantification of these additional hormones alongside cortisol could therefore allow for the assessment of both stress and consequential reproductive alterations. To investigate these concepts, we artificially elevated circulating cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) using coconut oil implants for three weeks. Following this we quantified these three hormones as well as 11-ketotestosterone, a potent androgen in teleost fishes. In all cases serum samples reflected a significant increase in the injected hormone confirming the efficacy of this method; however, this did not result in significantly elevated scale concentrations of the same hormone in all cases. As the stress and reproductive axes are closely integrated, these findings are likely a result of interactions along the steroidogenic pathway indicating that a further investigation of the relationship between scale concentrations of these hormones and actual physiological processes is required. Nevertheless, the successful quantification of both stress and gonadal steroid hormones within the scale suggests that such measurements could provide a novel and informative tool in the assessment of long-term stress and the resulting effects on reproductive endocrinology in teleost fishes.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 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".