TS Jessop, R Woodford, MRE Symonds (2013) Macrostress: do large-scale ecological patterns exist in the glucocorticoid stress response of vertebrates? Functional Ecology27: 120-130 PDF
What’s it about?
Using a comparative analysis of reptiles and birds, and published data on glucocorticoid levels we examined whether internal metabolism and external environment influence the way species respond to stressful situations. We found more evidence for the former, rather than the latter.
What’s the story behind it?
Romy Woodford was a Masters’ student of Tim Jessop and I was called in to help out with the nitty gritty of the comparative analysis part of the project which was also linked in with an information-theoretic approach (also something I had experience with). Whilst we were doing the project Tim was asked to contribute a (different) paper towards a special edition of Functional Ecology, but it occurred to him that Romy’s project might be worth modifying to contribute another paper to the edition. It ended up being a little bit of a rush as we had to redo quite a bit of the original analysis and adapt what had originally be produced by Romy, but we got it in at the last moment.
The Symonds Lab 