Environmental drivers of growth and oxidative status during early life in a long-lived Antarctic seabird, the Adélie Penguin.

• Published in: Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
• Main Authors: Marciau, Coline, Costantini, David, Bestley, Sophie, Hicks, Olivia, Hindell, Mark, Kato, Akiko, Raclot, Thierry, Ribout, Cécile, Ropert-Coudert, Yan, Angelier, Frederic
• Other Authors: Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies Hobart (IMAS), University of Tasmania Hobart, Australia (UTAS), Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 (CEBC), La Rochelle Université (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN), Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences Largo dell’Università, 01100 Viterbo, Italy, Tuscia University, Université de Strasbourg
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Antarc*; Antarctic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04001668; https://doi.org/10.1086/724686

International audience In vertebrates, developmental conditions can have long-term effects on individual performance. It is increasingly recognized that oxidative stress could be one physiological mechanism connecting early-life experience to adult phenotype. Accordingly, markers of oxidative status could be useful for assessing the developmental constraints encountered by offspring. Although some studies have demonstrated that developmental constraints are associated with high levels of oxidative stress in offspring, it remains unclear how growth, parental behavior, and brood competition may altogether affect oxidative stress in long-lived species in the wild. Here, we investigated this question in a long-lived Antarctic bird species by testing the impact of brood competition (e.g., brood size and hatching order) on body mass and on two markers of oxidative damage in Adélie penguin chicks. We also examined the influence of parental effort (i.e., foraging trip duration) and parental body condition on chick body mass and oxidative damage. First, we found that brood competition and parental traits had significant impacts on chick body mass. Second, we found that chick age and, to a lesser extent, chick body mass were two strong determinants of the levels of oxidative damage in Adélie penguin chicks. Finally, and importantly, we also found that brood competition significantly increased the levels of one marker of oxidative damage and was associated with a lower survival probability. However, parental effort and parental condition were not significantly linked to chick levels of oxidative damage. Overall, our study demonstrates that sibling competition can generate an oxidative cost even for this long-lived Antarctic species with a limited brood size (maximum of two chicks).