Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory

01 May, 08 AM - 31 Aug, 02 AM

Belding?s ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi) live in high elevation meadows in the western US, and are highly social for rodents, with females living near and cooperating with female kin. Stressors include late spring snowstorms, aggressive conspecifics, food scarcity, and predation from aerial and terrestrial predators. I have studied U. beldingi at multiple sites in the eastern Sierra of CA (including 19 years in Rock Creek Canyon) as a model for how ecology, geographic variation, social systems and life-history parameters mediate their physiology, behavior and survival. I have shown that survival is associated with low (vs. elevated) cortisol, and that low cortisol improves immune functioning. In primates, high social connectedness is associated with improved immune and cardiac functioning, low stress hormones, and reduced mortality, but these relationships have not been studied in other taxa. We will examine the link between health and social structure in U. beldingi, using physiological data as well as behavioral data on social dominance, territoriality, and social interactions as a function of genetic relatedness. We will test whether female social relationships in U. beldingi buffer against social and predation pressure, resulting in lower cortisol, improved immune functioning and enhanced survival, compared with females with no or few surviving kin and males who have dispersed and do not live near kin. We will also test the prediction that reproductively successful males will experience reduced survivorship, compared with unsuccessful males and reproductively immature males, due to chronically elevated cortisol and thus reduced immune functioning during the month-long mating season. We are also testing the effects of hormones and relatedness on the plasticity of behavioral syndromes. These data will provide an important, and novel, understanding of the relationships among adrenal functioning, immune responses, predation risk, reproduction and social connectedness within an individual?s lifetime. Together, these will help us understand the mechanisms underlying differential survival and reproduction.

Visit #26947 @Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory

Approved

Under Project # 997 | Research

University of Chicago - Institute for Mind and Biology

faculty - University of Chicago

Reservation Members(s)

Group of 3 Research Assistant (non-student/faculty/postdoc) May 1 - Aug 31, 2012 (123 days)

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