Eye Region Surface Temperature and Corticosterone Response to Acute Stress in a High-Arctic Seabird, the Little Auk

• Published in: Animals
• Main Authors: Dariusz Jakubas, Katarzyna Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Antoine Grissot, Marion Devogel, Martyna Cendrowska, Olivier Chastel
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2022
• Subjects: acute stress; body surface temperature; hormonal stress response; thermal stress response; Arctic; Alle alle; little auk
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12040499

Measuring changes in surface body temperature (specifically in eye-region) in vertebrates using infrared thermography is increasingly applied for detection of the stress reaction. Here we investigated the relationship between the eye-region temperature (TEYE; measured with infrared thermography), the corticosterone level in blood (CORT; stress indicator in birds), and some covariates (ambient temperature, humidity, and sex/body size) in a High-Arctic seabird, the Little Auk Alle alle. The birds responded to the capture-restrain protocol (blood sampling at the moment of capturing, and after 30 min of restrain) by a significant TEYE and CORT increase. However, the strength of the TEYE and CORT response to acute stress were not correlated. It confirms the results of a recent study on other species and all together indicates that infrared thermography is a useful, non-invasive measure of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity under acute activation, but it might not be a suitable proxy for natural variation of circulating glucocorticoid levels.