Stress physiology

Environmental stress in the Anthropocene: How the new extremes can affect cell and organismal processes

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

Organisms are generally equipped to adapting to extreme environmental conditions. The increasingly rapid changes in the Anthropocene are now presenting animals, including humans, with completely new challenges. These also affects physiological processes – from the cellular, tissue level to the entire organism – that can lead to long-lasting effects across organisms´ lifespan. In our latest OA review paper, we identified some critical environmental factors responsible of such changes, and advocate a holistic approach to tackle these new research challenges in line with the contemporary One Health framework.

Conventional physiological research focuses on investigating the endogenous mechanisms underlying species’ adaptations to life in extreme habitats such as polar regions or deserts. Here, we argue that nowadays even habitats that are not considered extreme are exposed to unpredictable, rapid and strong (climate) changes due to human activities (and also independently of them) – which confronts all animals, including our species, with new types of environmental extremes.

We explore how ecophysiological research within the field of stress physiology and developmental plasticity can contribute to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying resilience and adaptability. We focused on physiological stress responses (glucocorticoids and oxidative stress) that are likely to have a key role in mediating the interactions between the exposome – i.e. the measure of all environmental influences to which an individual is exposed to throughout the course of its life – and the bio-exposome – i.e. the cellular processes in connection with relevant extreme anthropogenic changes. We focused on changes in habitat conditions associated with heat waves, water shortage, light pollution, noise, land-use, chemical pollution and reduced natural food resources.

The Vetmeduni PR on our latest article is available both in German and in English. We are much grateful to the PR team at Vetmeduni for helping us to communicate our work to broader audiences and contribute to our #OutreachMission #OpenScience.

From grandmothers down to grandoffspring: grandchicks of old grandmas are born “old”

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

As animals age, they generally look less good and their telomeres, small structures that protect chromosomes from becoming frayed or tangled, become shorter. In our article we investigated if the effects of age at conception of mothers to the telomeres of their offspring would persist over a subsequent generation (grandoffspring generation), having previously found out that they persisted into the offspring generation.

In this new study, we showed that the shortened telomeres found in the joungsters of older grandmothers are also present in their children, i.e. the grandchildren generation – even if the breeding mothers of the 2nd generation were young. This effect was considerable: telomeres were 43% shorter in the offspring of grandmothers who were old at rearing than in the offspring of the same grandmothers who were young at rearing. Shorter telomeres at the time of fledging are associated with a shorter lifespan in zebra finches. These results indicate that it is necessary to look beyond a single generation to explain inter-individual differences in ageing and different age-specific reproductive efforts. The mothers were young at the time of breeding, so effects due to the age of these mothers can be ruled out. It would be very interesting to know whether the effects of the grandmother’s age increase if the mother’s age is also high.

Our data reveal a hidden legacy that can be passed on across generations and has a negative impact on the lifespan and reproductive value of offspring. We stress, therefore, that evolutionary biologists and ecophysiologists need to look beyond a single generation and current environmental conditions to fully understand the causes of inter-individual differences in ageing rates and age-specific reproductive effort.

The article by Valeria Marasco, Winnie Boner, Kate Griffiths, Shirley Raveh and Pat Monaghan is accessible Open Access 🙂

We are very much grateful to the PR team at Vetmeduni for helping us to communicate our work to broader audiences and contribute to our #OutreachMission #OpenScience Vetmeduni PR article (in German and in English). 

How does early life adversity shape adult telomere dynamics?

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

Happy to annouce that our opinion manuscript dissecting out the potential link between early life adversity and adult telomere dynamics is now out in BioEssays

We discuss the main biological routes through which exposure to challenging conditions during development might induce long-lasting changes in the telomeric system, with potential consequences on reproduction and longevity. In this context, we propose three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses – Constraint, Resilience, and Pace of Life – and propose future studies to test them.

Stress influences telomere dynamics as predicted by changes in mortality rates

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

It is a pleasure to introduce our last paper on stress and ageing in #theFASEBJournal

This latest paper is associated with our previous findings where we found that the repeated exposure to challenging environmental circumstances during adult life increased chances of survival during middle adulthood, but not during young- or old-adulthood. Here we report that these effects are underpinned by changes in telomere dynamics, with stress-exposed birds showing reduced telomere loss in middle adulthood. Our data provides novel experimental evidence that telomere dynamics play a key role linking stress resilience and aging.

MSc project in behavioural biology and migratory bird physiology

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

We are looking for a motivated Master/Diploma student who would like to gain experience and knowledge on migratory physiology and behavioural biology. The student will be based in the Fusani’s lab a highly vibrant and constantly expanding research environment.

The student’s work will be part of a FWF-funded project on the role of environmental stress in the expression of migratory behaviour using the Common quail as our study species. The work will be performed from July 2020 until November 2020 at the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology. The working language is English. Previous experience with birds is very welcome but not necessary.

The student will have the opportunity to be involved in all the experimental phases, will be thought how to perform animal experiments in laboratory conditions, to take morphological and physiological measurements, as well as laboratory sample processing procedures. The student will also have the opportunity to learn the use of various methods to monitor time-budget behaviours (e.g. accelerometers). The student will be part of  our large research group with the opportunity to expand knowledge on different topics from animal behaviour and cognitive sciences, animal physiology, bird migration, molecular biology and genomics.

Get in touch for further information on the project. Dr Valeria Marasco, email: valeria.marasco@vetmeduni.ac.at (Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology).

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