Differences in fur cortisol levels of three migratory bats.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how organisms respond to their environments is challenging, especially due to the complex processes related to metabolism, energetics, and reproduction. Glucocorticoids (GCs) are metabolic hormones that provide insight into internal process and may trigger a variety of behaviors. To understand how changes to the environment influence wildlife, we must ideally measure levels of GCs in wildlife populations that are relatively undisturbed by anthropogenic change or natural disaster. In free-ranging mammals, cortisol is a primary GC hormone and can be measured in fur. Bats are the only mammalian order to have evolved true flight and, in North America, most species of bats are in the family Vespertilionidae. By measuring cortisol levels during energetically expensive periods of an

SUBMITTER: Green DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12289861 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature