The evolutionary endocrinology of circulating glucocorticoids in free-living vertebrates: recent advances and future directions across scales of study

Synopsis

Circulating glucocorticoid hormone concentrations are dynamic, flexible, and promote adaptive responses following perturbations in an animal's environment. As a result, circulating glucocorticoid levels are thought to shape fitness and have been suggested to be a key trait for predicting how species will cope with novel environmental change. Nevertheless, the factors that shape variation in glucocorticoid-mediated coping mechanisms remain unclear because the evolutionary underpinnings of the function and regulation of these hormones are poorly understood. Here, I summarize recent advances in our understanding of the evolution of circulating glucocorticoids, which have included (i) longitudinal studies exploring microevolutionary processes that shape within- and between-individual variation in glucocorticoids, (ii) interspecific comparative studies highlighting macro-evolutionary patterns of among-species variation in glucocorticoids, and (iii) intraspecific comparative studies which help to disentangle the relative roles of environment, life-history and behaviour in shaping among-population variation in glucocorticoids. Important avenues for future research will include exploring how natural selection may act on different components of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, characterizing patterns of phenotypic plasticity in circulating glucocorticoids across populations and species, as well as exploring how microevolutionary processes differ across taxa or gradients of environmental conditions.