Measuring corticosterone in feathers: Strengths, limitations, and suggestions for the future

The recently introduced technique of measuring corticosterone in feathers currently provides the longest-term measure of corticosterone in birds. This review examines the strengths, weaknesses, and unresolved technical issues of the feather corticosterone technique. Feather corticosterone's major strengths are that it provides: a retrospective assessment of corticosterone physiology, including information from absent (unseen) or dead (e.g. museum specimens) individuals; a long-term measure of corticosterone exposure over the period of feather growth (days-weeks), integrating both baseline and responses to stressors; and flexible, minimally-invasive, sampling. However, researchers considering this technique should be aware of its limitations. Feather corticosterone only reflects hormone exposure during feather growth and, when sampling during molt, corticosterone titers and ecological conditions may not be representative of the majority of the annual cycle. Synchronization of molt is often unknown for a population, requiring assumptions when making inter-individual comparisons. Additionally, unresolved technical issues include: assessing whether corticosterone is the only hormone measured by assays; determining deposition dynamics to fully understand connections between feather and plasma corticosterone titers; studying the longevity and stability of corticosterone in the feather; establishing the impact of feather size and color on corticosterone deposition; and understanding the causes and implications of corticosterone variation along the length of the feather. Notwithstanding the above limitations and technical challenges, determining corticosterone titers in feathers is proving to be a useful technique for exploring some ecological and physiological correlates in individual birds. Given the unique perspective that feather corticosterone offers, we suggest that this measure complement, not replace, plasma measurements.