Angelier Frédéric, Parenteau Charline, Trouvé Colette, Angelier Nicole
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé , CNRS-ULR, UMR-7372 , 79360 Villiers-en-Bois , France.
R Soc Open Sci. 2016 Dec 21;3(12):160840. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160840. eCollection 2016 Dec.
Although the transfer of wild animals to captivity is crucial for conservation purposes, this process is often challenging because some species or individuals do not adjust well to captive conditions. Chronic stress has been identified as a major concern for animals held on long-term captivity. Surprisingly, the first hours or days of captivity have been relatively overlooked. However, they are certainly very stressful, because individuals are being transferred to a totally novel and confined environment. To ensure the success of conservation programmes, it appears crucial to better understand the proximate causes of interspecific and interindividual variability in the sensitivity to these first hours of captivity. In that respect, the study of stress hormones is relevant, because the hormonal stress response may help to assess whether specific individuals or species adjust, or not, to such captive conditions ('the stress response-adjustment to captivity hypothesis'). We tested this hypothesis in rock pigeons by measuring their corticosterone stress response and their ability to adjust to short-term captivity (body mass loss and circulating corticosterone levels after a day of captivity). We showed that an increased corticosterone stress response is associated with a lower ability to adjust to short-term captivity (i.e. higher body mass loss and circulating corticosterone levels). Our study suggests, therefore, that a low physiological sensitivity to stress may be beneficial for adjusting to captivity. Future studies should now explore whether the stress response can be useful to predict the ability of individuals from different populations or species to not only adjust to short-term but also long-term captivity.
尽管为了保护目的将野生动物转移到圈养环境至关重要，但这一过程往往具有挑战性，因为一些物种或个体不能很好地适应圈养条件。长期圈养的动物，慢性应激已被确认为一个主要问题。令人惊讶的是，圈养的最初几个小时或几天相对被忽视了。然而，它们肯定极具压力，因为个体被转移到了一个全新且封闭的环境中。为确保保护计划的成功，更好地了解在对圈养最初几小时的敏感性方面种间和个体间差异的直接原因似乎至关重要。在这方面，应激激素的研究具有相关性，因为激素应激反应可能有助于评估特定个体或物种是否能适应此类圈养条件（“应激反应 - 对圈养的适应性假说”）。我们通过测量岩鸽的皮质酮应激反应以及它们适应短期圈养的能力（圈养一天后的体重减轻和循环皮质酮水平）来检验这一假说。我们发现，皮质酮应激反应增强与适应短期圈养的能力较低相关（即体重减轻更多和循环皮质酮水平更高）。因此，我们的研究表明，对应激的低生理敏感性可能有利于适应圈养。现在，未来的研究应该探索应激反应是否有助于预测来自不同种群或物种的个体不仅适应短期而且适应长期圈养的能力。
