Model Comparison Approach Research Articles

Lexical Surprisal Shapes the Time Course of Syntactic Structure Building.

When we understand language, we recognize words and combine them into sentences. In this article, we explore the hypothesis that listeners use probabilistic information about words to build syntactic structure. Recent work has shown that lexical probability and syntactic structure both modulate the delta-band (<4 Hz) neural signal. Here, we investigated whether the neural encoding of syntactic structure changes as a function of the distributional properties of a word. To this end, we analyzed MEG data of 24 native speakers of Dutch who listened to three fairytales with a total duration of 49 min. Using temporal response functions and a cumulative model-comparison approach, we evaluated the contributions of syntactic and distributional features to the variance in the delta-band neural signal. This revealed that lexical surprisal values (a distributional feature), as well as bottom-up node counts (a syntactic feature) positively contributed to the model of the delta-band neural signal. Subsequently, we compared responses to the syntactic feature between words with high- and low-surprisal values. This revealed a delay in the response to the syntactic feature as a consequence of the surprisal value of the word: high-surprisal values were associated with a delayed response to the syntactic feature by 150-190 ms. The delay was not affected by word duration, and did not have a lexical origin. These findings suggest that the brain uses probabilistic information to infer syntactic structure, and highlight an importance for the role of time in this process.

Contributions to forearm desaturation during transient ischemia in healthy adult males and females across the lifespan.

This study investigated skeletal muscle tissue oxygenation (StO2) desaturation in males and females across the adult lifespan. One-hundred-two individuals (51 females) of 41 young, 34 midlife, and 27 older adults completed a vascular occlusion test with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS+VOT). This included five minutes of arterial occlusion, inducing transient ischemia in the forearm flexor muscle group while recording StO2. The magnitude of desaturation (StO2mag) was quantified as the difference between baseline StO2 and the minimum StO2 value observed during ischemia. The rate of desaturation was also examined. Forearm adipose tissue thickness (ATT), forearm lean mass, and handgrip muscular strength were measured. A p ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Two-way between factor ANOVAs indicated that males exhibited significantly (p<0.001) less ATT than females (collapsed across age) and that forearm lean mass (p<0.001) and muscular strength (p<0.001) decreased across the lifespan independent of sex. Bivariate analyses revealed significant (p<0.05) associations for sex, age, ATT, forearm lean mass, and muscular strength with the desaturation metrics. The ATT values demonstrated the strongest relations with StO2mag and desaturation rate (r = -0.620 and 0.618). Using a model comparison approach, ATT plus age offered the best predictive power for StO2mag and desaturation rate (R2 = 0.456 and 0.438) such that the inclusion of sex did not improve the models. These findings suggested differences in desaturation were primarily explained by variations in ATT and, to a lesser extent, age, but biological sex had no meaningful effect. Future studies must determine what other factors influence desaturation during ischemia.

The Lifespan Trajectories of Brain Activities Related to Cognitive Control.

Cognitive control plays a pivotal role in guiding human goal-directed behavior. While existing studies have documented an inverted U-shaped trajectory of cognitive control both behaviorally and anatomically, little is known about the corresponding changes in functional brain activation with age. To bridge this gap, we conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of 129 neuroimaging studies using conflict tasks, encompassing 3,388 participants aged from 5 to 85 years old. We have three major findings: 1) The inverted U-shaped trajectory is the predominant pattern; 2) Cognitive control-related brain regions exhibit heterogeneous lifespan trajectories: the frontoparietal control network follows inverted U-shaped trajectories, peaking between 24 and 40 years, while the dorsal attention network demonstrates no clear trajectories; 3) Both the youth and the elderly show weaker brain activities and greater left laterality than young to middle-aged adults. These results reveal the lifespan trajectories of cognitive control, highlighting heterogeneous fluctuations in brain networks with age.

Widespread changes in gene expression accompany body size evolution in nematodes.

Body size is a fundamental trait that drives multiple evolutionary and ecological patterns. Caenorhabditis inopinata is a fig-associated nematode that is exceptionally large relative to other members of the genus, including Caenorhabditis elegans. We previously showed that C. inopinata is large primarily due to postembryonic cell size expansion that occurs during the larval-to-adult transition. Here, we describe gene expression patterns in C. elegans and C. inopinata throughout this developmental period to understand the transcriptional basis of body size change. We performed RNA-seq in both species across the L3, L4, and adult stages. Most genes are differentially expressed across all developmental stages, consistent with C. inopinata's divergent ecology and morphology. We also used a model comparison approach to identify orthologues with divergent dynamics across this developmental period between the 2 species. This included genes connected to neurons, behavior, stress response, developmental timing, and small RNA/chromatin regulation. Multiple hypodermal collagens were also observed to harbor divergent developmental dynamics across this period, and genes important for molting and body morphology were also detected. Genes associated with transforming growth factor β signaling revealed idiosyncratic and unexpected transcriptional patterns given their role in body size regulation in C. elegans. This widespread transcriptional divergence between these species is unexpected and maybe a signature of the ecological and morphological divergence of C. inopinata. Alternatively, transcriptional turnover may be the rule in the Caenorhabditis genus, indicative of widespread developmental system drift among species. This work lays the foundation for future functional genetic studies interrogating the bases of body size evolution in this group.

Engagement in a pilot produce prescription program in rural and urban counties in the Southeast United States.

In the United States, over one in every ten households experiences food insecurity. Food insecurity is associated with often co-occurring adverse health consequences, including risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension. Within the "Food is Medicine" intervention space, Produce Prescription Programs (PRx) seek to alleviate food insecurity and improve diet and health outcomes by leveraging access to produce through healthcare organizations. Though these programs are burgeoning across the United States, research surrounding their implementation and outreach is limited. This study evaluates the implementation, reach, engagement, and retention of a PRx program piloted in two regions of Georgia (US) from 2020 to 2022. The study included 170 people living with one or more cardiometabolic conditions recruited from clinical sites in metropolitan and rural areas. The program provided pre-packaged produce boxes and nutrition education over six months. We examine participants' baseline demographics, food security status, dietary patterns, and loss to follow-up across contexts (metropolitan and rural). We employ regression analyses and model comparison approaches to identify the strongest predictors of loss to follow-up during the pilot period. In the pilot period of this program, 170 participants enrolled across rural and metropolitan sites. Of these, 100 individuals (59%) remained engaged for the six-month program. While many individuals met the target criteria of living with or at-risk of food insecurity, not all lived with low or very low food security. Metropolitan participants, males, and those with children in the household had significantly higher odds of loss to follow-up compared to rural participants, females, and those without children in the household. No other significant demographic or household differences were observed. This study demonstrates the potential of PRx programs to enhance food and nutrition security and cardiometabolic health in metropolitan and rural clinical settings. Future research should focus on addressing barriers to engagement and expanding the reach, impact, and sustainability of PRx programs across diverse contexts.

Large-scale data decipher children's scale errors: A meta-analytic approach using the zero-inflated Poisson models.

Scale errors are intriguing phenomena in which a child tries to perform an object-specific action on a tiny object. Several viewpoints explaining the developmental mechanisms underlying scale errors exist; however, there is no unified account of how different factors interact and affect scale errors, and the statistical approaches used in the previous research do not adequately capture the structure of the data. By conducting a secondary analysis of aggregated datasets across nine different studies (n=528) and using more appropriate statistical methods, this study provides a more accurate description of the development of scale errors. We implemented the zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression that could directly handle the count data with a stack of zero observations and regarded developmental indices as continuous variables. The results suggested that the developmental trend of scale errors was well documented by an inverted U-shaped curve rather than a simple linear function, although nonlinearity captured different aspects of the scale errors between the laboratory and classroom data. We also found that repeated experiences with scale error tasks reduced the number of scale errors, whereas girls made more scale errors than boys. Furthermore, a model comparison approach revealed that predicate vocabulary size (e.g., adjectives or verbs), predicted developmental changes in scale errors better than noun vocabulary size, particularly in terms of the presence or absence of scale errors. The application of the ZIP model enables researchers to discern how different factors affect scale error production, thereby providing new insights into demystifying the mechanisms underlying these phenomena. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/1v1U6CjDZ1Q RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We fit a large dataset by aggregating the existing scale error data to the zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) model. Scale errors peaked along the different developmental indices, but the underlying statistical structure differed between the in-lab and classroom datasets. Repeated experiences with scale error tasks and the children's gender affected the number of scale errors produced per session. Predicate vocabulary size (e.g., adjectives or verbs) better predicts developmental changes in scale errors than noun vocabulary size.

Fear-related psychophysiological patterns are situation and individual dependent: A Bayesian model comparison approach.

Is there a universal mapping of physiology to emotion, or do these mappings vary substantially by person or situation? Psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists have debated this question for decades. Most previous studies have focused on differentiating emotions on the basis of accompanying autonomic responses using analytical approaches that often assume within-category homogeneity. In the present study, we took an alternative approach to this question. We determined the extent to which the relationship between subjective experience and autonomic reactivity generalizes across, or depends upon, the individual and situation for instances of a single emotion category, specifically, fear. Electrodermal activity and cardiac activity-two autonomic measures that are often assumed to show robust relationships with instances of fear-were recorded while participants reported fear experience in response to dozens of fear-evoking videos related to three distinct situations: spiders, heights, and social encounters. We formally translated assumptions from diverse theoretical models into a common framework for model comparison analyses. Results exceedingly favored a model that assumed situation-dependency in the relationship between fear experience and autonomic reactivity, with subject variance also significant but constrained by situation. Models that assumed generalization across situations and/or individuals performed much worse by comparison. These results call into question the assumption of generalizability of autonomic-subjective mappings across instances of fear, as required in translational research from nonhuman animals to humans, and advance a situated approach to understanding the autonomic correlates of fear experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Settlement Organization and Distribution in Bronze Age Sardinia: Utilizing Cumulative Viewshed Analysis and Spatial Statistics in the Sulcis Plain

ABSTRACT Nuraghi are ubiquitous in the Bronze Age Sardinian landscape, but the reasons for their distribution and wider function remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the argument that these megalithic fortified towers were situated for visual control and thus represent nodes of political or coercive power. Using a dataset of 102 nuraghi, we perform a normalized cumulative viewshed to quantify nuraghe visibility in southwestern Sardinia. We analyze the co-occurrence of highly visible areas with variables pertinent to economic control of the landscape using a model comparison approach. The results suggest that there is no underlying structure to the location of the nuraghi that can be related to visual appreciability of the wider environment, indicating that visual control was not an important consideration during the later 2nd millennium b.c. We consider what the driving rationale may have been behind such a predominant site type that is yet apparently unrelated to political control.

Modelling the Distribution of Cognitive Outcomes for Early-Stage Neurocognitive Disorders: A Model Comparison Approach.

Background: Cognitive assessments for patients with neurocognitive disorders are mostly measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Visual Cognitive Assessment Test (VCAT) as screening tools. These cognitive scores are usually left-skewed and the results of the association analysis might not be robust. This study aims to study the distribution of the cognitive outcomes and to discuss potential solutions. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective cohort study of individuals with subjective cognitive decline or mild cognitive impairment, the inverse-transformed cognitive outcomes are modelled using different statistical distributions. The robustness of the proposed models are checked under different scenarios: with intercept-only, models with covariates, and with and without bootstrapping. Results: The main results were based on the VCAT score and validated via the MoCA score. The findings suggested that the inverse transformation method improved the modelling the cognitive scores compared to the conventional methods using the original cognitive scores. The association of the baseline characteristics (age, gender, and years of education) and the cognitive outcomes were reported as estimates and 95% confidence intervals. Bootstrap methods improved the estimate precision and the bootstrapped standard errors of the estimates were more robust. Cognitive outcomes were widely analysed using linear regression models with the default normal distribution as a conventional method. We compared the results of our suggested models with the normal distribution under various scenarios. Goodness-of-fit measurements were compared between the proposed models and conventional methods. Conclusions: The findings support the use of the inverse transformation method to model the cognitive outcomes instead of the original cognitive scores for early-stage neurocognitive disorders where the cognitive outcomes are left-skewed.

Role of work ethic in the work–life satisfaction relationship: a longitudinal moderation model

PurposeThe authors examine the longitudinal relationship between work satisfaction and life satisfaction, and the moderating role of work ethic.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a nationally representative sample of Dutch working adults (N = 1020; three waves over five years) and take a model comparison approach to identify the longitudinal relationship between work satisfaction and life satisfaction. To test the moderating effects of work ethic, the authors use conditional process analyses.FindingsThe authors find more evidence as to how work satisfaction and life satisfaction are positively and reciprocally linked over time using longitudinal data. More importantly, work ethic strengthens the positive effect of work satisfaction on life satisfaction, but no such moderating role is observed as to the effect from life satisfaction to work satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe findings raise awareness that employees' overall happiness in life matters to workplace satisfaction. More importantly, one effective strategy to promote work satisfaction is to design work that nurtures strong work ethic – measures that help employees see more value in their work.Originality/valueThe findings regarding the role of work ethic show that the conservation of resources theory can be an informative lens to understand the work–life satisfaction relationship. For individuals with strong work ethic, work satisfaction constitutes a more salient form of psychological resources benefiting their overall life satisfaction.

The Influence of Grazing Systems on Bird Species Richness and Density in the Nebraska Sandhills

Grazing is the de facto method of habitat management used in much of the Nebraska Sandhills. Ranchers use a variety of grazing systems, and our goal was to evaluate the effects of systems on grassland birds. We estimated the species richness and density of grassland birds for three grazing systems used on private ranches: long, medium, and short duration grazing systems. We observed sixty species, and the grazing system with pastures utilizing long duration grazing periods had the highest estimates of species richness as well as the most heterogeneous habitat structure. Differences in species richness among systems were most pronounced in years of limited precipitation. Together, grasshopper sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum), western meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta), and brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) accounted for 72% of our observations. We used a model comparison approach to determine the effects of habitat on the densities of six species. Densities of grasshopper sparrows and mourning doves showed effects of the grazing system. More species had higher densities in short duration, rotational systems than other grazing systems. However, species of grassland birds showed responses to a variety of cover types and habitat structures depending on life history needs. Regardless of the grazing system used, managers can use grazing and other tools such as prescribed burning to maintain habitat heterogeneity to support diverse bird communities.

Spatiotemporal gender differences in urban vibrancy

Urban vibrancy is the dynamic activity of humans in urban locations. It can vary with urban features and the opportunities for human interactions, but it might also differ according to the underlying social conditions of city inhabitants across and within social surroundings. Such heterogeneity in how different demographic groups may experience cities has the potential to cause gender segregation because of differences in the preferences of inhabitants, their accessibility and opportunities, and large-scale mobility behaviours. However, traditional studies have failed to capture fully a high-frequency understanding of how urban vibrancy is linked to urban features, how this might differ for different genders, and how this might affect segregation in cities. Our results show that (1) there are differences between males and females in terms of urban vibrancy, (2) the differences relate to ‘Points of Interest’ as well as transportation networks, and (3) there are both positive and negative ‘spatial spillovers’ existing across each city. To do this, we use a quantitative approach using Call Detail Record data – taking advantage of the near-ubiquitous use of mobile phones – to gain high-frequency observations of spatial behaviours across Italy’s seven most prominent cities. We use a spatial model comparison approach of the direct and ‘spillover’ effects from urban features on male-female differences. Our results increase our understanding of inequality in cities and how we can make future cities fairer.

Joint species distribution modeling with competition for space

AbstractJoint species distribution models (JSDM) are among the most important statistical tools in community ecology. However, existing JSDMs cannot model mutual exclusion between species. We tackle this deficiency in the context of modeling plant percentage cover data, where mutual exclusion arises from limited growing space and competition for light. We propose a hierarchical JSDM where latent Gaussian variable models describe species' niche preferences and Dirichlet‐Multinomial distribution models the observation process and competition between species. We also propose a decision theoretic model comparison and validation approach to assess the goodness of JSDMs in four different types of predictive tasks. We apply our models and methods to a case study on modeling vegetation cover in a boreal peatland. Our results show that ignoring the interspecific interactions and competition reduces models' predictive performance and leads to biased estimates for total percentage cover. Models' relative predictive performance also depends on the predictive task highlighting that model comparison and assessment should resemble the true predictive task. Our results also demonstrate that the proposed JSDM can be used to simultaneously infer interspecific correlations in niche preference as well as mutual competition for space and through that provide novel insight into ecological research.

Supplemental Material for Fear-Related Psychophysiological Patterns Are Situation and Individual Dependent: A Bayesian Model Comparison Approach

Supplemental Material for Fear-Related Psychophysiological Patterns Are Situation and Individual Dependent: A Bayesian Model Comparison Approach

Uncovering the dimensionality of authorial voice in the integrated writing task: A confirmatory factor analysis study

Research has long noted the importance of establishing an authorial voice as a hallmark of academic writing. However, despite purported connections between academic writing and integrated writing tasks (Gebril & Plakans, 2014; Huang & Hung, 2013), little attention has been paid to examine the role and effect of authorial voice on writing quality in a test task that involves use of source texts. The primary intent of this study is to shed light on the internal structure of authorial voice in an integrated reading-to-write task by way of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The participants of this study included 315 Chinese college-level EFL students who wrote for a task addressing the topic of “eating for professional situations”. Based on an analytic rubric developed by the researchers with indicators informed by Hyland's (2005) interactional framework of authorial voice, the collected essays were rated on a scale of 1–5 based on the quality as it pertains to each of the indicators under the rubric. The results of a model comparison approach to CFA suggested that the current data are best characterized as a unidimensional construct; it represents one single factor. Furthermore, the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis indicated verbatim source use is inversely associated with quality of authorial voice, corroborating our hypothesis that improper source copying negatively influences the rater's perception of a test-taker's authorial voice. Practical implications regarding rubric use and instruction are discussed.

The trend of oral cancer screening in Bangladesh, perceptions, and risk factors: a model comparison approach

Background: Oral cancer (OC) is a leading cause of death among cancer patients and a major public health concern in Bangladesh. Timely OC screening can help in the early detection of OC and could reduce the mortality rate in Bangladesh. We aimed to assess the tend of OC screening, perception and risk factors among dental patients. Methods: This was a facility-based cross-sectional study among 423 participants with dental problems using a convenience sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed by IBM SPSS 25 and various statistics, such as the chi-squared test, Poisson regression, logistic regression, etc., were used to attain the objectives. Results: Only 2.4% of the study participants underwent OC screening before the study period. The use of smokeless tobacco and smoking were significantly associated with the tend of OC screening. According to the Poisson model, previous smokeless tobacco users were 5 times (odds ratio (OR): 5.403, P&lt;0.05) more likely than non-users to go for OC screening, which was 8 times (OR: 7.729, P=0.033) for the binary logistic regression. Having a family history of OC increased the odds of receiving an OC screening by nine times (OR: 9.544, P&lt;0.002) compared to individuals without a family history of OC; it was 16 times (OR: 16.438, P=0.001) for the binary logistic regression. Conclusions: This study shows former smokeless tobacco users and past smokers are more likely to uptake OC screening than non-users. In addition, patients having a family history of OC increased the odds of receiving OC screening than subjects without a family history of OC. The lack of OC screening in Bangladesh highlights the need to implement a national-level screening program to help with the early diagnosis of OC and its prevention.

Sex differences in NIRS derived values of reactive hyperemia persist after experimentally controlling for the ischemic vasodilatory stimulus.

Men and women exhibit different near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) outcomes in response to vascular occlusion tests (VOT), which may be due to phenotypic characteristics or different degrees of desaturation during ischemia. The minimum skeletal muscle tissue oxygenation (StO2min) observed during a VOT may be the primary determinant of reactive hyperemic (RH) responses. Our purpose was to determine the contribution StO2min and participant characteristics including adipose tissue thickness (ATT), lean body mass (LBM), muscular strength, and limb circumference to NIRS-derived indices of RH. Also, we aimed to determine if matching StO2min would eliminate NIRS-VOT sex differences. Thirty-one young adults completed one or two VOTs during which the vastus lateralis was continuously assessed for StO2. The men and women each completed a standard VOT with a 5-min ischemic phase. The men completed a second VOT with a shortened ischemic phase to produce a matching StO2min to the minimum of the women observed during the standard VOT. Mean sex differences were determined with t-tests and relative contributions were assessed with multiple regression and model comparison approaches. During the 5-min ischemic phase, the men exhibited greater upslopes (1.97±0.66 vs. 1.23±0.59%∙s-1) and greater StO2max than the women (80.3±4.17 vs. 76.2±2.86%). Analysis revealed StO2min was a greater contributor to upslope than sex and/or ATT. For StO2max, sex was the only significant predictor (r2=0.26, men ~ 4.09% > women). Experimentally matching StO2min did not eliminate the sex differences in upslope or StO2max, suggesting that characteristics other than the degree of desaturation primarily provoke sex differences in RH.

Temperature variability and metabolic adaptation in terrestrial and aquatic ectotherms

Thermodynamics is a major factor determining rates of energy expenditure, rates of biochemical dynamics, and ultimately the biological and ecological processes linked with resilience to global warming in ectothermic organisms. Nonetheless, whether ectothermic organisms exhibit general adaptive metabolic responses to cope with worldwide variation in thermal conditions has remained as an open question. Here we combine a model comparison approach with a global dataset of standard metabolic rates (SMR), including 1,160 measurements across 788 species of aquatic invertebrates, insects, fishes, amphibians and reptiles, to investigate the association between metabolic rates and environmental temperatures in their respective habitats. Our analyses suggest that variation in SMR after removing allometric and thermodynamic effects is best explained by the temperature range encountered across seasons, which always provided a better fit than the average temperature for the hottest and coldest month and mean annual temperatures. This pattern was consistent across taxonomic groups and robust to sensitivity analyses. Nonetheless, aquatic and terrestrial lineages responded differently to seasonality, with SMR declining – 6.8% °C−1 of thermal range across seasons in aquatic organisms and increasing 2.8% °C−1 in terrestrial organisms. These responses may reflect alternative strategies to mitigate the impact of increments in warmer temperatures on energy expenditure, either by means of metabolic reduction in thermally homogeneous water bodies or effective behavioral thermoregulation to exploit temperature heterogeneity on land.

Does every study? Implementing ordinal constraint in meta-analysis.

The most prominent goal when conducting a meta-analysis is to estimate the true effect size across a set of studies. This approach is problematic whenever the analyzed studies have qualitatively different results; that is, some studies show an effect in the predicted direction while others show no effect and still others show an effect in the opposite direction. In case of such qualitative differences, the average effect may be a product of different mechanisms, and therefore uninterpretable. The first question in any meta-analysis should therefore be whether all studies show an effect in the same, expected direction. To tackle this question a model with ordinal constraints is proposed where the ordinal constraint holds each study in the set. This "every study" model is compared with a set of alternative models, such as an unconstrained model that predicts effects in both directions. If the ordinal constraints hold, one underlying mechanism may suffice to explain the results from all studies, and this result could be supported by reduced between-study heterogeneity. A major implication is then that average effects become interpretable. We illustrate the model comparison approach using Carbajal et al.'s (2021) meta-analysis on the familiar-word-recognition effect, show how predictor analyses can be incorporated in the approach, and provide R-code for interested researchers. As common in meta-analysis, only surface statistics (such as effect size and sample size) are provided from each study, and the modeling approach can be adapted to suit these conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Cold temperatures induce priming of the glucose stress response in tree swallows

Capricious environments often present wild animals with challenges that coincide or occur in sequence. Conceptual models of the stress response predict that one threat may prime or dampen the response to another. Although evidence has supported this for glucocorticoid responses, much less is known about the effects of previous challenges on energy mobilization. Food limitation may have a particularly important effect, by altering the ability to mobilize energy when faced with a subsequent challenge. We tested the prediction that challenging weather conditions, which reduce food availability, alter the energetic response to a subsequent acute challenge (capture and restraint). Using a three-year dataset from female tree swallows measured during three substages of breeding, we used a model comparison approach to test if weather (temperature, wind speed, and precipitation) over 3- or 72-hour timescales predicted baseline and post-restraint glucose levels, and if so which environmental factors were the strongest predictors. Contrary to our predictions, weather conditions did not affect baseline glucose; however, birds that had experienced lower temperatures over the preceding 72 h tended to have higher stress-induced glucose when faced with an acute stressor. We also saw some support for an effect of rainfall on stress-induced glucose: around the time that eggs hatched, birds that had experienced more rainfall over the preceding 72 h mounted lower responses. Overall, we find support in a wild animal for the idea that the glucose stress response may be primed by exposure to prior challenges.