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Weather and Social Factors on Hormones in European Badger
Journal
Zoology - Received 9 December 2022, Revised 31 March
2023, Accepted 27 April 2023, Available online 27 April 2023.
Authors
Sugianto N A (a d), Newman C, (a b), MacDonald DW (A),
Buesching CD (B C) a Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of
Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney OX13
5QL, UK b Cook’s Lake Farming Forestry and Wildlife Inc (Ecological
Consultancy), Queens County, Nova Scotia, Canada c Department of
Biology, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Sciences, The University of British
Columbia, Okanagan, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada d School of
Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Abstract
Animals in the wild continually experience changes in
environmental and social conditions, which they respond to with
behavioural, physiological and morphological adaptations related to
individual phenotypic quality. During unfavourable environmental
conditions, reproduction can be traded-off against self-maintenance,
mediated through changes in reproductive hormone levels. Using the
European badger (Meles meles) as a model species, we examine how
testosterone in males and oestrogens in females respond to marked
deviations in weather from the long-term mean (rainfall and temperature,
where badger earthworm food supply is weather dependent), and to social
factors (number of adult males and females per social group and total
adults in the population), in relation to age, weight and head-body
length. Across seasons, testosterone levels correlated postively with body
weight and rainfall variability, whereas oestrone correlated positively
with population density, but negatively with temperature variability.
Restricting analyses to the mating season (spring), heavier males had
higher testosterone levels and longer females had higher oestradiol
levels. Spring oestrone levels were lower when temperatures were above
normal. That we see these effects for this generally adaptive species with
a broad bioclimatic niche serves to highlight that climatic effects
(especially with the threat of anthropogenic climate change) on
reproductive physiology warrant careful attention in a conservation
context.
Keywords
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