Parental habituation to human disturbance over time reduces fear of humans in coyote offspring.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental tenet of maternal effects assumes that maternal variance over time should have discordant consequences for offspring traits across litters. Yet, seldom are parents observed across multiple reproductive bouts, with few studies considering anthropogenic disturbances as an ecological driver of maternal effects. We observed captive coyote (Canis latrans) pairs over two successive litters to determine whether among-litter differences in behavior (i.e., risk-taking) and hormones (i.e., cortisol and testosterone) corresponded with parental plasticity in habituation. Thus, we explicitly test the hypothesis that accumulating experiences of anthropogenic disturbance reduces parental fear across reproductive bouts, which should have disparate phenotypic consequences for first- an

SUBMITTER: Schell CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6308887 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature