Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Ecology and Evolution

Publication Date

Spring 4-3-2016

Keywords

Capture-mark-recapture, house wren, recruitment, Troglodytes aedon

Abstract

The injection of phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and sampling of blood are widelyused in studies of wild vertebrates to assess components of immune and endo-crine function and health state and to obtain genetic material. Despite the per-vasive use of these techniques in the life sciences, their potential effects onsurvival are rarely considered. For example, whether injection of the immuno-gen PHA into body parts critical for locomotion (e.g., the prepatagium, or wingweb, in birds) affects survival has not been tested. Here, we test whether injec-tion of PHA into the wing web and blood sampling from nestling house wrensaffects their subsequent recruitment and survival as breeding adults. Capture-mark-recapture analysis on a large sample of young (N = 20,152 fledglingsfrom 3959 broods) treated over 10 years revealed that neither PHA injectionnor blood sampling affected individual survival and detection probability.Recruitment as a breeder varied among years, but this variation was not attri-butable to sampling effort, or the percent of all adults identified at the nestduring a given year. Variation in the percent of adults identified was primarilyattributable to the effect of nest depredation on our ability to capture nestingpairs. Our results indicating lack of an effect of blood sampling and immunestimulation on survival are encouraging, but we recommend further work toassess the potential negative effects of all commonly used techniques on thesurvival of study subjects in the wild, including the potential costs associatedwith mounting various immunological responses.

Funding Source

National Science Foundation (Grant/AwardNumber: “IBN-0316580”); National Institutesof Health (Grant/Award Number:“R15HD076308-01”); School of BiologicalSciences, Illinois State University; College ofArts and Sciences, Illinois State University;Beta Lambda Chapter of the Phi SigmaBiological Sciences Honor Society.

Comments

First published in Ecology and Evolution (2016): https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2112

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Supplementary: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fece3.2112&file=ece32112-sup-0001-Appendix.docx

DOI

10.1002/ece3.2112

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