Tracy A. Marchant

TL;DR: The analysis of feather CORT is a novel methodology that allows for meaningful interpretations of how individuals respond to environmental perturbations and adjust to life-history stages, and shows the HPA activity of an individual with a flexible time frame from days to months depending on the length of time taken to grow the feather.

TL;DR: It is shown that the magnitude of the adrenocortical response to a standardized perturbation during development is negatively related to survival and recruitment in a wild population of long lived birds, providing empirical evidence for a link between stress response, not exposure to stressors, and fitness in a vertebrate under natural conditions.

TL;DR: Experimental evidence is provided for a link between testosterone levels and immunoenhancing carotenoids that reconciles conflicting evidence for the immunosuppressive nature of androgens, provides physiological grounds for a connection between two of the main signaling systems in animals, and explains how these signaling systems can be evolutionary stable and honest.

TL;DR: Following exposure to long-term stress, moderately elevated serum corticosterone and fecal glucocorticoid metabolites levels in the wild rabbits were negatively associated with body condition, but positively associated with subsequent survival upon release.

TL;DR: By understanding how the hormone is deposited in feathers, in combination with specific sampling protocols, one can identify localised patterns of CORT deposition that reveal different temporal patterns of a bird's response to stressors.