Hormones and Life Histories: An Integrative Approach

This article, which focuses on hormones and the diverse effects they have on behavior and physiology, raises evolutionary questions that hormonal studies appear especially well suited to address. These include the endocrine basis for life-history trade-offs, the role of hormones in adaptive alterations in social organization and mating systems, and whether natural selection acts on traits or organisms. The article also shows how phenotypic engineering by hormonal manipulations can reveal the evolutionary significance of phenotypic variation. By generating rare or novel phenotypes, we can attempt to determine the shape of fitness profiles in nature. To illustrate phenotypic engineering, we manipulated plasma testosterone in a freeliving bird, the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), and measured the effects of the treatment on behavior, including allocation of time to mate attraction and parental behavior as well as use of space, and on physiology, including regulation of body mass, corticosterone, and molt. We compared treated males to controls for various correlates of fitness, including territory acquisition, mate acquisition, mate retention, physical condition of the mate, apparent reproductive success, extrapair fertilizations, and survival. The results to date appear to indicate that selection is relatively indifferent to a broad range of phenotypes, while extreme deviations from the norm are selected against.

• Publication year

  1992

• Venue

  American Naturalist

• Publication date

  1992-11-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1086/285396PMID 19426026
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• The reported results suggest that selection is relatively indifferent to a broad range of phenotypes but acts against extreme deviations from the norm.

  Confidence 0.92

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• Testosterone-treated male dark-eyed juncos are compared with controls across behavioral, physiological, and fitness-related traits, including mate attraction, parental behavior, body mass, corticosterone, molt, territory and mate acquisition, reproduction, and survival.

  Confidence 0.96

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• Manipulating plasma testosterone in freeliving dark-eyed juncos is used as phenotypic engineering to generate rare or novel phenotypes for evolutionary inference.

  Confidence 0.95

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• Hormonal studies are presented as especially well suited to address evolutionary questions about life-history trade-offs and adaptive changes in social organization and mating systems.

  Confidence 0.89

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review

• dark-eyed junco

  organism

  The freeliving bird species Junco hyemalis used as the study organism.

  Aliases: Junco hyemalis, junco

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• fitness profiles

  evolutionary concept

  The relationship between phenotype and fitness outcomes in nature that the article seeks to infer.

  Aliases: fitness landscape

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• hormones

  biological factor

  Endocrine signaling molecules discussed as the central focus of the article's evolutionary and physiological framing.

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• life-history trade-offs

  evolutionary concept

  Allocations among growth, reproduction, maintenance, and survival that the article treats as an evolutionary problem relevant to hormone action.

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• phenotypic engineering

  method

  Experimental manipulation of hormones to create unusual phenotypes for testing evolutionary hypotheses.

  Aliases: engineering of phenotypes

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• plasma testosterone manipulation

  experimental manipulation

  The experimental alteration of circulating testosterone levels used to change male phenotype in the field study.

  Aliases: testosterone treatment, testosterone manipulation

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review
• social organization and mating systems

  ecological concept

  The structure of social interactions and reproductive pairing patterns that hormones may alter in adaptive ways.

  Aliases: mating systems

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewAnonymous (12632b8b5f) review

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