Challenges associate with microbiome diversity, glucocorticoids, and condition in a wild songbird

Slevin, Morgan C.; Houtz, Jennifer L.; Vitousek, Maren N.; Anderson, Rindy C.

doi:10.1038/s41598-026-42507-x

Challenges associate with microbiome diversity, glucocorticoids, and condition in a wild songbird

Persistent URL

https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/62573

Author(s)

Slevin, Morgan C.

Houtz, Jennifer L.

Allegheny College

Vitousek, Maren N.

Anderson, Rindy C.

Date Issued

March 13, 2026

Abstract

Wild animals experience daily fitness challenges, and the resulting stress responses can disrupt an animal's gut microbiome. Given the links between health and microbiome composition, it is essential to understand how challenges affect microbial communities. We showed that a fitness challenge significantly alters the cloacal microbiome of free-living Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis), and these shifts covary with changes to the glucocorticoid stress response, condition, and beak ornamentation. Treatment significantly related to beta diversity, while it only influenced alpha diversity indirectly through interactions with health-related traits. Birds held for an extended time before release showed greater cloacal microbiome community changes 11 days later vs. birds administered a simulated territorial intrusion challenge, or control birds administered no challenge. We also detected relationships between beta diversity and change in body condition and beak ornamentation. Birds showing the greatest alpha diversity decrease and largest beta diversity between timepoints experienced the greatest corticosterone response to handling. Finally, several Amplicon Sequence Variants were differentially abundant in challenged birds compared to control birds. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate proximate effects of fitness challenges on the microbiome of an adult, free-living songbird, while simultaneously tracking changes in glucocorticoid levels, body condition, and ornamentation-providing a uniquely integrative perspective on how stress shapes host-microbe interactions in the wild.

Journal

Scientific Reports

Citation

Slevin, M.C., Houtz, J.L., Vitousek, M.N. et al. Challenges associate with microbiome diversity, glucocorticoids, and condition in a wild songbird. Sci Rep 16, 8511 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-42507-x

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

DOI

10.1038/s41598-026-42507-x

ISSN

2045-2322

Rights

© The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Type of Publication

Journal Article

File(s)

Name

2026_Houtz_Challenges.pdf

Size

2.29 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

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