No evidence for prenatal auditory stress in the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- William Francis Davis (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
Abstract: Prenatal precocial birds have long been shown to perceive auditory signals, including stressful signals of predation, prior to hatching. Little work has been done to examine prenatal auditory stress in altricial birds. Stress, including auditory stress, may lead to the shortening of telomeres as a result of oxidative damage. I hypothesized that exposure to stress-inducing alarm calls, signals of the presence of predators, to unhatched chicks of the altricial Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinesnsis) would result in the shortening of telomere length post-hatching. I measured the relative telomere length from 44 chicks in 25 Carolina chickadee nests using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to compare the relative amplification of telomeres to the single copy control gene glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). I found no evidence of reduction in telomere length of chicks exposed to prenatal alarm calls compared to control chicks, and thus no evidence of prenatal stress, nor were there any changes in growth metrics. I did find evidence that parental nest defense, and potentially incubation duration, were influenced by the addition of alarm calls. Future studies should explore the possibility of predator presence influencing incubation duration and the physiological processes of auditory development in altricial chicks.
No evidence for prenatal auditory stress in the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)
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Created on 3/1/2023
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Language: English
- Date: 2023
- Keywords
- Auditory Development, Carolina chickadee, Prenatal Stress
- Subjects
- Carolina chickadee
- Telomere
- Birds—Embryology
- Birds—Defenses
- Auditory perception