Food restriction negatively affects multiple levels of the reproductive axis in male house finches, Haemorhous mexicanus

Shelley Valle*, Elodie Carpentier, Bethany Vu, Kazuyoshi Tsutsui, Pierre Deviche

*この研究の対応する著者

    研究成果: Article査読

    27 被引用数 (Scopus)

    抄録

    Nutrition influences reproductive functions across vertebrates, but the effects of food availability on the functioning of the hypothalamic- pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis in wild birds and the mechanisms mediating these effects remain unclear.We investigated the influence of chronic food restriction on the HPG axis of photostimulated house finches, Haemorhous mexicanus. Food-restricted birds had underdeveloped testes with smaller seminiferous tubules than ad libitum-fed birds. Baseline plasma testosterone increased in response to photostimulation in ad libitum-fed but not in food-restricted birds. Food availability did not, however, affect the plasma testosterone increase resulting from a gonadotropin-releasing hormone-I (GnRH) or a luteinizing hormone (LH) challenge. The number of hypothalamic GnRH immunoreactive (ir) but not proGnRH-ir perikaryawas higher in food-restricted than in ad libitum-fed finches, suggesting inhibited secretion of GnRH. Hypothalamic gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH)-ir and neuropeptide Y (NPY)-ir were not affected by food availability. Plasma corticosterone (CORT) was also not affected by food availability, indicating that the observed HPG axis inhibition did not result from increased activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal (HPA) axis. This study is among the first to examine multilevel functional changes in the HPG axis in response to food restriction in a wild bird. The results indicate that food availability affects both hypothalamic and gonadal function, but further investigations are needed to clarify the mechanisms by which nutritional signals mediate these effects.

    本文言語English
    ページ(範囲)2694-2704
    ページ数11
    ジャーナルJournal of Experimental Biology
    218
    17
    DOI
    出版ステータスPublished - 2015 9月 1

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • 動物科学および動物学
    • 生態、進化、行動および分類学
    • 分子生物学
    • 生理学
    • 昆虫科学
    • 水圏科学

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