MARINE MAMMAL RESEARCH UNIT - UBC

Endocrine Explorations

Endocrine Explorations
Marine Mammal Research Unit

To land-dwellers, a sea lion’s life looks fairly uneventful: swim, eat, sleep and reproduce. In fact, a sea lion leads a rather dramatic life. Sea lions and all marine mammals, for that matter live in environments that are continuously changing, particularly with regards to food supply. An animal’s ability to respond to these changes determines whether or not it will live to swim, eat, sleep, and reproduce another day.

Survival largely depends on how the animal regulates energy intake and expenditure when times get tough. Fortunately, they can defer these decisions to a powerful internal headquarters: the endocrine system. This complex system of glands secretes hormones that regulate the body, influencing an animal’s physiological responses in times of food shortages.

hormones2A team of Consortium researchers recently got to know the Steller sea lion’s endocrine system more intimately by finding out how hormone changes during periods of food shortage are influenced by an animal’s age, diet, and the season.
The research team comprised Tiphaine Jenniard du Dot, David Rosen, and Andrew Trites from the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre; Julie P. Richmond from the University of Connecticut’s Department of Animal Science, and Alexander S. Kitaysky of the Institue of Arctic Biology (University of Alaska Fairbanks). Their study was published in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology.
Honing in on hormones
The researchers focused on the three groups of hormones primarily involved in the endocrine response to nutritional stress: the somatotropic hormones including the insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-I), the thyroid hormones (T3 and T4), and glucocorticoids such as cortisol. They chose eight captive female Stellers (five three-year-olds and three five-year-olds), and reduced the animals’ food intake for significant periods in both summer and winter. One test group was given a smaller ration of its usual herring diet (a high-fat fish), while the other received a normal amount of fish but were switched to pollock (a low-fat, low-energy fish). After the test period, both groups returned to eating their normal herring regime.
endocrine_ag3The researchers found that the Stellers’ levels of stress hormones (cortisol) and growth hormones (IGF-I) measured via blood samples changed as the animals lost and regained weight. In fact, they were able to link each hormone to a different strategy for preserving energy (lipid versus lean mass catabolism). Thyroid hormones, on the other hand, could not be linked to any physical changes they observed.
The researchers also found that young animals show greater hormone changes than their elders, and that the type of fish they received (high-energy or low-energy) made little difference on hormone levels.
Another step forward
The team concluded that studying a Steller sea lion’s cortisol and IGF-I levels could help them detect and better understand nutritional stress, as well as the energetic strategy animals use to cope with it. The study brought them yet another step closer to understanding how Steller sea lions cope with the unpredictable environments they call home.

SEE PUBLICATION:

Changes in glucocorticoids, IGF-I and thyroid hormones as indicators of nutritional stress and subsequent refeeding in Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus).
Jeanniard du Dot, T., D.A.S. Rosen, J.P. Richmond, A.S. Kitaysky, S.A. Zinn and A.W Trites. 2009.
Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A 152:524-534.
abstract
Physiological responses to changes in energy balance are tightly regulated by the endocrine system through glucocorticoids, IGF-I and thyroid hormones. Changes in these hormones were studied in eight captive female Steller sea lions that experienced changes in food intake, body mass, body composition, and blood metabolites during summer and winter. During a period of energy restriction, one group of sea lions was fed reduced amounts of Pacific herring and another was fed an isocaloric diet of walleye pollock, after which both groups returned to their pre-experimental diets of herring. Cortisol was negatively and IGF-I was positively associated with changes in body mass during periods of energy restriction (mass loss associated with increase in cortisol and decrease in IGF-I) and refeeding (body mass maintenance associated with stable hormone concentrations in summer and compensatory growth linked to decrease in cortisol and increase in IGF-I in winter). Cortisol and IGF-I were also correlated with changes in lipid and lean mass, respectively. Consequently, these two hormones likely make adequate biomarkers for nutritional stress in sea lions, and when combined provide indication of the energetic strategy (lipid vs lean mass catabolism) animals adopt to cope with changes in nutrient intake. Unlike type of diet fed to the sea lions, age of the animals also impacted hormonal responses, with younger animals showing more intense hormonal changes to nutritional stress. Thyroid hormones, however, were not linked to any physiological changes observed in this study.
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