ArticleScientific reports2016
Seasonal variation in harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) blubber cortisol - A novel indicator of physiological state?
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the Relationship Between Blubber Thickness and Adipocyte Size in Beluga Whales.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Time Series Analysis for Physiological and Endocrinological Data: A Practical Guide.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Review
- Stress, Well-Being, and Reproduction in Wildlife.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- A sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analytical method of steroid hormones in small blubber samples from four whale species.Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- Skin Cortisol and Acoustic Activity: Potential Tools to Evaluate Stress and Welfare in Captive Cetaceans.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal variation of ringed seal blubber cortisol levels in the Canadian Arctic.Journal of mammalogy · 2022Article
- Variation of blubber thickness for three marine mammal species in the southern Baltic Sea.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- Steroid hormones in Pacific walrus bones collected over three millennia indicate physiological responses to changes in estimated population size and the environment.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Using claws to compare reproduction, stress and diet of female bearded and ringed seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas, Alaska, between 1953-1968 and 1998-2014.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Patterns of cortisol and corticosterone concentrations in humpback whale (Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Detection of steroid and thyroid hormones in mammalian teeth.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Response of metabolic hormones and blood metabolites to realimentation in rehabilitated harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) pups.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2020Article
- Article
- Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry for the quantification of steroid hormone profiles in blubber from stranded humpback whales (Conservation physiology · 2019Article
- A novel method to measure steroid hormone concentrations in walrus bone from archaeological, historical, and modern time periods using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry.Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM · 2018Article
- Alpha male status and availability of conceptive females are associated with high glucocorticoid concentrations in high-ranking male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) during the mating season.Hormones and behavior · 2018Article
- Using blubber explants to investigate adipose function in grey seals: glycolytic, lipolytic and gene expression responses to glucose and hydrocortisone.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Rapid and reliable steroid hormone profiling in Tursiops truncatus blubber using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry · 2017Article
- Evaluating morphometric and metabolic markers of body condition in a small cetacean, the harbor porpoise (Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cortisol is one of the main glucocorticoid hormones involved in both the mammalian stress response, and in fat metabolism and energy regulation, making it of increasing interest as a biomarker for stress, health and overall physiological state. However, transient stress responses to animal handling and sampling may be important sources of measurement artefact when investigating circulating concentrations of this hormone in wildlife. Here, cortisol concentrations were measured in the plasma and, for the first time, in the blubber of live captured adult harbour seals (Phoca vitulina). Plasma cortisol concentrations were positively correlated with capture time, suggesting that they were largely driven by a stress response to the capture event. In contrast, blubber cortisol concentrations were shown not to be significantly affected by capture time and varied significantly by sex and by season, with higher concentrations during natural fasting periods of their life cycle, particularly during the moult. These results suggest that cortisol may play a key role in increased fat metabolism during highly energetically demanding periods, and that blubber concentrations have the potential to be used as physiological state indicators in phocid seals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.