Local, environmental and trace metal effects on gut microbiota diversity in urban feral pigeons.

Nowadays, understanding the biotic responses to the enhanced urbanization need to encompass not the only the physiological and phenotypic features but also the related microbiota of wildlife animals. One of main threats in urban ecosystems is the chemical pollution. Thus, we have explored whether the cloacal microbiota of feral pigeons (Columba livia) is impacted by both their geographical foraging area, and metal exposure in an urban context.

Testosterone variation in a semi-captive population of Asian elephants in Myanmar.

Hormones are known to be involved in life-history trade-offs as systemic signals that establish functional links among traits and regulate key behavioural and physiological transitions between states in organisms. Although major functions of many steroid hormones such as testosterone are conserved among vertebrates, circulating concentrations vary widely both within and across species, and the degree to which observed hormone concentrations mediate life-history responses to environmental variation is less understood. In this study, we investigated how faecal testosterone metabolite (FTM) concentrations varied with extrinsic and intrinsic factors.