Stress-related and reproductive hormones in hair from three north Pacific otariid species: Steller sea lions, California sea lions and northern fur seals

摘要: Assessing the physiological impact of stressors in pinnipeds is logistically challenging, and many hormones are altered by capture handling, limiting utility metabolically active tissues. Hair increasingly being used to investigate stress-related reproductive wildlife populations due less-invasive collection methods, inert once grown containing multiple biomarkers ecological interest. We validated enzyme immunoassays for measuring aldosterone, cortisol, corticosterone, testosterone lanugo (natal hair utero) samples collected from Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus), California (Zalophus californianus), northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus). applied laboratory validation methods including recovery added mass, parallelism dilution linearity. found no effects differences alcohol- versus detergent-based cleaning methods. Further, there were significant hormone concentrations immediately after molt subsequent over 1 year, indicating steroid stable deposited into pinniped hair. sex any concentrations, likely utero influenced maternal concentrations. For lion pups, we significantly differed between rookeries, which warrants future research. provides a novel tissue explore intrinsic or extrinsic drivers behind measurements otariids, can be paired with health-related metrics further possible stress.