ArticleConservation physiology2023
Assessing chronic stress in wild mammals using claw-derived cortisol: a validation using European badgers (
Article in Conservation physiology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Method for Assessing Week-Long Cortisol Output Using a Continuously Worn Sweat Patch.Methods and protocols · 2026Article
- Spikes in the data: biological validation and applications of an assay for detecting faecal glucocorticoid metabolites in Western European hedgehogs (Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- DHEA and Cortisol in Rainbow Trout (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Dermal glucocorticoids are uncoupled from stress physiology and infection.Conservation physiology · 2025Article
- Assessment of stress levels and reproductive condition in giant pandas: insights from hair, faecal and saliva samples.Conservation physiology · 2024Article
- A validated LC-MS/MS method for simultaneous determination of key glucocorticoids in animal hair for applications in conservation biology.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Measuring stress experienced by wild mammals is increasingly important in the context of human-induced rapid environmental change and initiatives to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts. Glucocorticoids (GC), such as cortisol, mediate responses by promoting physiological adjustments during environmental perturbations. Measuring cortisol is a popular technique; however, this often reveals only recent short-term stress such as that incurred by restraining the animal to sample blood, corrupting the veracity of this approach. Here we present a protocol using claw cortisol, compared with hair cortisol, as a long-term stress bio-indicator, which circumvents this constraint, where claw tissue archives the individual's GC concentration over preceding weeks. We then correlate our findings against detailed knowledge of European badger life history stressors. Based on a solid-phase extraction method, we assessed how claw cortisol concentrations related to season and badger sex, age and body-condition using a combination of generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) (
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Registered trials
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