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Research article Conservation Physiology • Volume 3 2015
Figure 2: Experiment 2. Population stress response: comparison of CORT concentrations in different individuals of disturbed and not-disturbed Downloaded from http://conphys.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 12, 2016
groups every 5 min from 0 to 40 min. The terms ‘in’ and ‘out’ refer to the inner and outer colony, respectively.
Figure 3: Experiment 3. Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and dexamethasone (DEX) challenges: comparison of CORT levels in ACTH-
injected, DEX-injected and control individuals (pooled individuals, saline injected and not injected) at 30 min from a non-disturbed population,
the inner colony (a), and a disturbed population, the outer colony (b).
Interestingly, in hormonally untreated birds, i.e. birds that did not mount a stress response to handling stress, because
were simply kept in a bag between the first and the second we had expected that a perceived predation event, such as
sampling (experiment 1, Fig. 1a; and the control group of the capture and handling, would elicit a clear hormonal response.
third experiment, Fig. 1b), we did not find an increase in These results were further supported by the results of the
CORT levels after 30 min in both disturbed and undisturbed second experiment, in which we measured CORT levels of
birds. We were surprised that the non-disturbed sub-colony different individuals sampled at 5 min intervals over a period
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