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      Endocrine mechanisms, behavioral phenotypes and plasticity: known relationships and open questions

      review-article
      1 , 2 , , 1
      Frontiers in Zoology
      BioMed Central
      New Perspectives in Behavioural Development: Adaptive Shaping of Behaviour over a Lifetime?
      29 September-1 October 2014
      hormone, behavior, reaction norm, environmental gradient, quantitative relationship, corticosterone, testosterone

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          Abstract

          Behavior of wild vertebrate individuals can vary in response to environmental or social factors. Such within-individual behavioral variation is often mediated by hormonal mechanisms. Hormones also serve as a basis for among-individual variations in behavior including animal personalities and the degree of responsiveness to environmental and social stimuli. How do relationships between hormones and behavioral traits evolve to produce such behavioral diversity within and among individuals? Answering questions about evolutionary processes generating among-individual variation requires characterizing how specific hormones are related to variation in specific behavioral traits, whether observed hormonal variation is related to individual fitness and, whether hormonal traits are consistent (repeatable) aspects of an individual's phenotype. With respect to within-individual variation, we need to improve our insight into the nature of the quantitative relationships between hormones and the traits they regulate, which in turn will determine how they may mediate behavioral plasticity of individuals. To address these questions, we review the actions of two steroid hormones, corticosterone and testosterone, in mediating changes in vertebrate behavior, focusing primarily on birds. In the first part, we concentrate on among-individual variation and present examples for how variation in corticosterone concentrations can relate to behaviors such as exploration of novel environments and parental care. We then review studies on correlations between corticosterone variation and fitness, and on the repeatability over time of corticosterone concentrations. At the end of this section, we suggest that further progress in our understanding of evolutionary patterns in the hormonal regulation of behavior may require, as one major tool, reaction norm approaches to characterize hormonal phenotypes as well as their responses to environments.

          In the second part, we discuss types of quantitative relationships between hormones and behavioral traits within individuals, using testosterone as an example. We review conceptual models for testosterone-behavior relationships and discuss the relevance of these models for within-individual plasticity in behavior. Next, we discuss approaches for testing the nature of quantitative relationships between testosterone and behavior, concluding that again reaction norm approaches might be a fruitful way forward.

          We propose that an integration of new tools, especially of reaction norm approaches into the field of behavioral endocrinology will allow us to make significant progress in our understanding of the mechanisms, the functional implications and the evolution of hormone–behavior relationships that mediate variation both within and among individuals. This knowledge will be crucial in light of already ongoing habitat alterations due to global change, as it will allow us to evaluate the mechanisms as well as the capacity of wild populations to adjust hormonally-mediated behaviors to altered environmental conditions.

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          Most cited references120

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          Coping styles in animals: current status in behavior and stress-physiology.

          This paper summarizes the current views on coping styles as a useful concept in understanding individual adaptive capacity and vulnerability to stress-related disease. Studies in feral populations indicate the existence of a proactive and a reactive coping style. These coping styles seem to play a role in the population ecology of the species. Despite domestication, genetic selection and inbreeding, the same coping styles can, to some extent, also be observed in laboratory and farm animals. Coping styles are characterized by consistent behavioral and neuroendocrine characteristics, some of which seem to be causally linked to each other. Evidence is accumulating that the two coping styles might explain a differential vulnerability to stress mediated disease due to the differential adaptive value of the two coping styles and the accompanying neuroendocrine differentiation.
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            Physiological stress in ecology: lessons from biomedical research.

            Increasingly, levels of the 'stress hormones' cortisol and corticosterone are being used by ecologists as indicators of physiological stress in wild vertebrates. The amplitude of hormonal response is assumed to correlate with the overall health of an animal and, by extension, the health of the population. However, much of what is known about the physiology of stress has been elucidated by the biomedical research community. I summarize five physiological mechanisms that regulate hormone release during stress that should be useful to ecologists and conservationists. Incorporating these physiological mechanisms into the design and interpretation of ecological studies will make these increasingly popular studies of stress in ecological settings more rigorous.
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              Organizing action of prenatally administered testosterone propionate on the tissues mediating mating behavior in the female guinea pig.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Conference
                Front Zool
                Front. Zool
                Frontiers in Zoology
                BioMed Central
                1742-9994
                2015
                24 August 2015
                : 12
                : Suppl 1
                : S7
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Eberhard-Gwinner-Str., D-82319 Seewiesen, Germany
                [2 ]University of Konstanz, Department of Biology, Universitätsstraße 10, D-78464 Konstanz, Germany
                Article
                1742-9994-12-S1-S7
                10.1186/1742-9994-12-S1-S7
                4722346
                26816524
                f39ece3d-67e6-4765-8a74-20298e4ea343
                Copyright © 2015 Hau et al.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                New Perspectives in Behavioural Development: Adaptive Shaping of Behaviour over a Lifetime?
                Bielefeld, Germany
                29 September-1 October 2014
                History
                Categories
                Review

                Animal science & Zoology
                hormone,behavior,reaction norm,environmental gradient,quantitative relationship,corticosterone,testosterone

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