Michael Romero, Tufts University: Stress Physiology in Conservation: Predicting Human Impacts on Wildlife

Species populations can decline for many reasons, but stress on individuals of those populations can make all of those reasons worse. Our recent and ongoing work has focused on two related questions: can chronic stress of individuals be used as a proxy for the health of the population; and how exactly might a stress response put a population at greater risk of decline? The ultimate goal is to use measurements of the stress response as a tool in vertebrate conservation.