Seabird Stress Response is Oceans Apart

Seabird at it's nest of 2 eggs.

Black-legged kittiwake

    It is an observed fact that seabirds that die young and lay more eggs are more likely to look after their chicks when times are stressful than would less-fertile, longer-lived birds.  Jannik Schultner of Norwegian University of Science and Technology and colleagues performed an experiment of implanting Atlantic and Pacific populations of the black-legged kittiwakes.  They were implanted with tubes of a hormone that is associated with food shortages known as corticosterone. 

    The Pacific populations of the seabird have less offspring and have a higher survival rate than does the Atlantic populations.  With the hormone, the Pacific seabirds abandoned their young, making them more likely to die than the Atlantic seabirds.  The Atlantic colony had the opposite effect with extra hormones added and the survival rate of the offspring increased.  It is suggested that any animals life strategies can predict their responses to stress even if short term.
   
    I thought that this article was very interesting because we know how stress effects us individually but not really how it affects animals.  Whether the stress response is short term or long term can determine the survival rate of a species, it what I have gathered from this article.

http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/seabirds_foragefish/products/publications/rlki_cort_KITAYSKY.pdf
http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/seabirds_foragefish/products/reports/Bering_Sea_stress_results_99/bogrep00.php