ArticleHormones and behavior2016
Elevated corticosterone during egg production elicits increased maternal investment and promotes nestling growth in a wild songbird.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Do Egg Hormones Have Fitness Consequences in Wild Birds? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Prenatal Corticosterone Impacts Nestling Condition and Immunity in Eastern Bluebirds.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2025Article
- Avian extraembryonic membranes respond to yolk corticosterone early in development.Biology open · 2024Article
- Heat stress and poultry production: a comprehensive review.Poultry science · 2023Review
- Chronic Heat Stress Part 2: Increased Stress and Fear Responses in FAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Urbanization and maternal hormone transfer: Endocrine and morphological phenotypes across ontogenetic stages.General and comparative endocrinology · 2023Article
- Parental favoritism in a wild bird population.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Female birds monitor the activity of their mates while brooding nest-bound young.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Maternal glucocorticoid levels during incubation predict breeding success, but not reproductive investment, in a free-ranging bird.Biology open · 2020Article
- Inter-Individual Variation in Anti-Parasitic Egg Rejection Behavior: A Test of the Maternal Investment Hypothesis.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2020Article
- Condition-Dependent Begging Elicits Increased Parental Investment in a Wild Bird Population.The American naturalist · 2019Article
- Nest microclimate during incubation affects posthatching development and parental care in wild birds.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- A Mathematical Modeling Approach to the Cort-Fitness Hypothesis.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Host defences against avian brood parasitism: an endocrine perspective.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Pre- and postnatal effects of experimentally manipulated maternal corticosterone on growth, stress reactivity and survival of nestling house wrens.Functional ecology · 2018Article
- The effect of pre-laying maternal immunization on offspring growth and immunity differs across experimentally altered postnatal rearing conditions in a wild songbird.Frontiers in zoology · 2018Article
- Integrating Ecological and Evolutionary Context in the Study of Maternal Stress.Integrative and comparative biology · 2017Article
- Baseline and stress-induced levels of corticosterone in male and female Afrotropical and European temperate stonechats during breeding.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- Pre- and Postnatal Effects of Corticosterone on Fitness-Related Traits and the Timing of Endogenous Corticosterone Production in a Songbird.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological genetics and physiology · 2016Article
- Experimental cross-fostering of eggs reveals effects of territory quality on reproductive allocation.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Glucocorticoids circulating in breeding birds during egg production accumulate within eggs, and may provide a potent form of maternal effect on offspring phenotype. However, whether these steroids affect offspring development remains unclear. Here, we employed a non-invasive technique that experimentally elevated the maternal transfer of corticosterone to eggs in a wild population of house wrens. Feeding corticosterone-injected mealworms to free-living females prior to and during egg production increased the number of eggs that females produced and increased corticosterone concentrations in egg yolks. This treatment also resulted in an increase in the amount of yolk allocated to eggs. Offspring hatching from these eggs begged for food at a higher rate than control offspring and eventually attained increased prefledging body condition, a trait predictive of their probability of recruitment as breeding adults in the study population. Our results indicate that an increase in maternal glucocorticoids within the physiological range can enhance maternal investment and offspring development.
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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.