Modulation of heart rate response to acute stressors throughout the breeding season in the king penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus

Heart rate as a measure of emotional arousal in evolutionary biology

How individuals interact with their environment and respond to changes is a key area of research in evolutionary biology. A physiological parameter that provides an instant proxy for the activation of the automatic nervous system, and can be measured relatively easily, is modulation of heart rate. Over the past four decades, heart rate has been used to assess emotional arousal in non-human animals in a variety of contexts, including social behaviour, animal cognition, animal welfare and animal personality. In this review, I summarize how measuring heart rate has provided new insights into how social animals cope with challenges in their environment. I assess the advantages and limitations of different technologies used to measure heart rate in this context, including wearable heart rate belts and implantable transmitters, and provide an overview of prospective research avenues using established and new technologies, with a special focus on implications for applied research on animal welfare. This article is part of the theme issue 'Measuring physiology in free-living animals (Part II)'.

Quantifying the Autonomic Response to Stressors-One Way to Expand the Definition of "Stress" in Animals

Quantifying how whole organisms respond to challenges in the external and internal environment ("stressors") is difficult. To date, physiological ecologists have mostly used measures of glucocorticoids (GCs) to assess the impact of stressors on animals. This is of course too simplistic as Hans Seyle himself characterized the response of organisms to "noxious stimuli" using multiple physiological responses. Possible solutions include increasing the number of biomarkers to more accurately characterize the "stress state" of animal or just measuring different biomarkers to more accurately characterize the degree of acute or chronic stressors an animal is experiencing. We focus on the latter and discuss how heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) may be better predictors of the degree of activation of the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary system and complement or even replace measures of GCs as indicators of animal health, welfare, fitness, or their level of exposure to stressors. The miniaturization of biological sensor technology ("bio-sensors" or "bio-loggers") presents an opportunity to reassess measures of stress state and develop new approaches. We describe some modern approaches to gathering these HR and HRV data in free-living animals with the aim that heart dynamics will be more integrated with measures of GCs as bio-markers of stress state and predictors of fitness in free-living animals.

Effects of simulated highway noise on heart rates of larval monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus: implications for roadside habitat suitability

Developed countries around the world are criss-crossed with vast networks of roadways. Conservationists have recently focused attention on roadsides as possible locations for establishing pollinator habitat, with the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) featuring prominently in such discussions. However, roadsides are inherently loud, which could negatively affect developing larvae. We conducted a series of experiments testing if simulated highway noise stresses monarch larvae, which we gauged by non-destructive monitoring of heart rates. In two replicated experiments, larvae exposed for 2 h experienced a significant increase in heart rate (16 and 17% elevation), indicating they perceive traffic noise as a stressor. Meanwhile, experiments exposing larvae for either 7 or 12 days to continuous traffic noise both showed no heart rate elevation at the end of larval development, suggesting chronic noise exposure leads to habituation or desensitization. Habituation to stress as larvae may impair reactions to real-world stressors as adults, which could be problematic for a butterfly that undertakes an annual two-month migration that is fraught with dangers. More generally, these results could have far-reaching implications for the billions of insects worldwide that develop near roadways, and argue that further study is needed before promoting roadside habitat for butterfly conservation.

How Truly Conserved Is the “Well-Conserved” Vertebrate Stress Response?

The vertebrate stress response is considered to be a highly conserved suite of responses that are evolved to help animals survive noxious environmental stimuli. The two major pathways of the stress response include the catecholamine release that is part of the autonomic nervous system and comprises the immediate fight-or-flight response, and the slower release of corticosteroids from the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis that help orchestrate longer-term responses. These two pathways are present in every vertebrate yet examined, and the anatomical and physiological architecture underlying these pathways are consistent. Despite these structural similarities, however, recent data indicate substantial temporal and species variation in the actual regulation of these pathways. For example, activation of both pathways varies seasonally in some species but not others, and responses of both pathways can be extensively modulated by an individual’s previous experience. Consequently, even though the anatomy of the stress response is highly conserved, the activation and functional output is not highly conserved. Given this variation, it is perhaps not surprising that it is proving difficult to correlate individual stress responses with differences in fitness outcomes. This review summarizes the challenge of making broad generalized assumptions about fitness consequences of the stress response given the functional variation we observe.

An integrative appraisal of the hormonal and metabolic changes induced by acute stress using king penguins as a model

A large number of studies have focused on the reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis and the consequences of glucocorticoids (GC) in mediating life-history trade-offs. Although short-term increases in GCs are viewed as adaptive, mobilizing energy substrates allowing animals to deal with impending threats (e.g. stimulating hepatic gluconeogenesis, stimulating lipolysis, mobilizing amino acids), few studies have actually measured the exact time-course of substrate mobilisation in response to acute stress in natural conditions. We evaluated the hormonal and metabolic components of the stress response to acute stress in 32 free-living king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus). We monitored changes in blood GCs (corticosterone, CORT), glucose, lactate, ketone bodies (β-hydroxybutyrate), non-esterified fatty acids, and uric acid in response to a standardized capture-restraint protocol lasting for up to 90min. Furthermore, we tested whether the vigilance status of the animal (alert or asleep) affected its perception of the capture, thereby modulating the hormonal and metabolic stress responses. The time course of energy mobilisation followed the characteristic pattern expected from laboratory and theoretical models, with a rapid depletion of those energy stores linked to rapid adrenergic responses (i.e. glucose and ketone bodies), followed by a mobilisation of energy stores associated with the sustained longer-term GC response (i.e. fats and protein stores). HPA reactivity was generally slower than reported in other birds, and there was high inter-individual variability. Sleeping birds had higher GC and glucose responses to acute stress, suggesting a more rapid mobilization of energy stores. Our results highlight the importance of considering HPA and metabolic responses to acute stress against species-specific life history and ecological relevant backgrounds.

Breeding status affects the hormonal and metabolic response to acute stress in a long-lived seabird, the king penguin

Stress responses are suggested to physiologically underlie parental decisions promoting the redirection of behaviour away from offspring care when survival is jeopardized (e.g., when facing a predator). Besides this classical view, the "brood-value hypothesis" suggests that parents' stress responses may be adaptively attenuated to increase fitness, ensuring continued breeding when the relative value of the brood is high. Here, we test the brood-value hypothesis in breeding king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), long-lived seabirds for which the energy commitment to reproduction is high. We subjected birds at different breeding stages (courtship, incubation and chick brooding) to an acute 30-min capture stress and measured their hormonal (corticosterone, CORT) and metabolic (non-esterified fatty acid, NEFA) responses to stress. We found that CORT responses were markedly attenuated in chick-brooding birds when compared to earlier stages of breeding (courtship and incubation). In addition, NEFA responses appeared to be rapidly attenuated in incubating and brooding birds, but a progressive increase in NEFA plasma levels in courting birds suggested energy mobilization to deal with the threat. Our results support the idea that stress responses may constitute an important life-history mechanism mediating parental reproductive decisions in relation to their expected fitness outcome.

Effects of human disturbance on cave-nesting seabirds: the case of the storm petrel

Human disturbance is an important stress factor with potentially strong impact on breeding activity in animals. The consequences can be extinction of the breeding population, because disturbed animals might desert their breeding area and find no suitable substitute area. In this study, we investigated the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on a breeding population of Mediterranean storm petrels. Seabirds are increasingly used as bio-indicators for sea environmental parameters, because they are very sensitive to changing conditions. Burrowing or cave-nesting species may be particularly susceptible to human disturbance because their direct contact with humans is usually minimal or absent. First, we compared two different populations (exposed or not exposed to human disturbance) for their individual stress response to a standardized stressor (handling and keeping in a cloth bag). Second, we compared the two sub-colonies for their population-level stress response. Third, we tested experimentally whether sub-colonies of storm petrels exposed to tourism have physiological adaptations to anthropogenic disturbances. Our results indicate that storm petrels may be habituated to moderate disturbance associated with boat traffic close to the colony.