Sampling effort/frequency necessary to infer individual acute stress responses from fecal analysis in Greylag geese...

Measuring hormone metabolites from excreta is a powerful method to study hormone-behavior relationships. Currently, fecal corticosterone metabolite concentrations are used to estimate individual short-term stress responses. From the free-roaming, semitame flock of greylag geese (Anser anser), as many fecal samples as possible were collected over 3 h following a challenge (social density stress) or in a control situation. This time span corresponds to the gut passage time of geese. It was asked how many samples were necessary to determine differences in excreted corticosterone immunoreactive metabolites (CORTs) between control and social density stress and which parameters (means, maxima, range) reliably showed this difference. A large variation of CORT was found between consecutive samples. Still, means, maxima, and ranges of the samples in a fecal series consistently showed the response to a stressor both within and between individuals. Three samples sufficed if the maximum value of CORT was used, whereas four or more samples were necessary to work with the mean. It was concluded that by increasing the number of fecal samples collected, the course of CORT could be measured more precisely and an individual's acute stress response inferred more reliably.