ArticleEcotoxicology (London, England)2015
Mercury and cortisol in Western Hudson Bay polar bear hair.
Article in Ecotoxicology (London, England), 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pollution, stress response, and obesity: A systematic review.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Pooled it
- Exposure and hormone associations of pesticides and flame retardants among primates in Uganda.Environmental toxicology and chemistry · 2025Article
- Evaluation of physiological stress in free-ranging bears: current knowledge and future directions.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Review
- Can scale cortisol concentration be quantified non-lethally in wild fish species?Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- A Review of Non-Invasive Sampling in Wildlife Disease and Health Research: What's New?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- Validation of a novel method to create temporal records of hormone concentrations from the claws of ringed and bearded seals.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
- Stress-related and reproductive hormones in hair from three north Pacific otariid species: Steller sea lions, California sea lions and northern fur seals.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
- Do follicles matter? Testing the effect of follicles on hair cortisol levels.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
- Predictors and immunological correlates of sublethal mercury exposure in vampire bats.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- The quantification of reproductive hormones in the hair of captive adult brown bears and their application as indicators of sex and reproductive state.Conservation physiology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Non-invasive methods of assessing animal health and life history are becoming increasingly popular in wildlife research; hair samples from polar bears (Ursus maritimus), are being used to study an ever broader range of anthropogenic and endocrine compounds. A number of contaminants are known to disrupt endocrine function in polar bears. However, the relationship between mercury and cortisol remains unknown, although mercury is an endocrine disruptor in other species. Here, we examine the relationship between concentrations of cortisol and total mercury (THg) analyzed in guard hair from 378 polar bears (184 females, 194 males) sampled in Western Hudson Bay, 2004-2012. The difference in mean cortisol concentration between female (0.8 ± 0.6 pg/mg) and male (0.7 ± 0.5 pg/mg) polar bears bordered on significance (p = 0.054). However, mean mercury concentration was significantly greater (p = 0.009) in females (4.7 ± 1.4 μg/g) than males (4.3 ± 1.2 μg/g). Hair cortisol in males was significantly influenced by mercury, age, and fatness, as well as interactions between mercury and year, mercury and fatness, and year and fatness (all: p < 0.03) (multiple regression analysis, whole model: r(2) = 0.14, F(7,185) = 4.43, p = 0.0001). Fatness was the only significant variable in the multiple regression analysis for females (r(2) = 0.06, F(1,182) = 13.0, p = 0.0004). In conclusion, a significant, but complex, relationship was found between mercury and cortisol concentrations in hair from male, but not female, polar bears.
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