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Social stress and health in group-living animals

The evolution of group living comes as a balance of benefits and costs, with benefits more often than not outweighing the costs. However, social environments may also be source of competition and individual stress (... have you never experienced peer pressure at work ?). We are interested in understanding the extent to which social environments act as a source or buffer to individual stress, affecting energetics, health and ageing

To approach this rather complex research theme, my collaborators and I focus mostly on colonial species living in natural, wild, conditions and question how social interactions and social group composition affects individual physiology and fitness

In colonial penguins for instance, we measure heart rate, glucocorticoid hormones, oxidative stress markers and telomere length to test how social aggression modulates individual stress and energetics, and what the consequences may be on offspring development 

In colonial colonial ground squirrels, we also use an ecophysiological approach, combined with long-term monitoring of individual life histories and behaviour (e.g. social network analyses) to try and disentangle social from genetic effects acting on adult stress, energetics, fitness, and the expression of offspring phenotype

penguins here !

squirrels here !

her name's bow 'n' arrow

female 7 years old !

More recently, we have also started working on captive zebra finches to experimentally test the effects of sociality on individual stress and health, as well as its consequences on offspring development

finches studied here ...

but really, they live here !

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  • An integrative appraisal of the hormonal and metabolic changes induced by acute stress using king penguins as a model.

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  • Breeding status affects the hormonal and metabolic response to acute stress in a long-lived seabird, the king penguin. 

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  • Aggression in ground squirrels: relationships with age, kinship, energy allocation and fitness.​

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  • Modulation of heart rate responses to acute stressors througout the breeding season in a colonial seabird, the king penguin

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  • Stress hormones in relation to breeding status and territory location in colonial king penguin: a role for social density?

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  • Energetic adjustments in freely breeding-fasting king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus): does colony density matter? 

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  • Starting with a handicap: phenotypic differences between early- and late-born king penguin chicks and their survival correlates.

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  • Coping with social stress: heart rate responses to agonistic interaction in king penguins.

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  • Active territory defence at a low energy cost in a colonial seabird.

A selection of related science stuff

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