Stress-induced changes in body surface temperature are repeatable, but do not differ between urban and rural birds.

Abstract

Urbanisation can alter local microclimates, thus creating new thermal challenges for resident species. However, urban environments also present residents with frequent, novel stressors (e.g., noise, human interaction) which may demand investment in costly, self-preserving responses (e.g., the fight-or-flight response). One way that urban residents might cope with this combination of demands is by using regional heterothermy to reduce costs of thermoregulation during the stress response. In this study, we used black-capped chickadees (nurban = 9; nrural = 10) to test whether known heterothermic responses to stress exposure (here, at the bare skin around the eye): (1) varied consistently among individuals (i.e., were repeatable), and (2) were most pronounced among urban individuals compared with rural individuals. Further, to gather evidence for selection on stress-induced heterothermic responses in urban settings, we tested: (3) whether repeatability of this response was lower among birds sampled from urban environments compared with those sampled from rural environments. For the first time, we show that heterothermic responses to stress exposures (i.e. changes in body surface temperature) were highly repeatable across chronic time periods (R = 0.58) but not acute time periods (R = 0.13). However, we also show that these responses did not differ between urban and rural birds, nor were our repeatability estimates any lower in our urban sample. Thus, while regional heterothermy during stress exposure may provide energetic benefits to some, but not all, individuals, enhanced use of this response to cope with urban pressures appears unlikely in our study species.