Maternal glucocorticoid exposure drives social tolerance and growth with limited evidence for long-term social buffering

Research Highlight: MacLeod, K., Bouffet-Halle, A., Wapstra, E., Uller, T., While, G. (2025). Maternal glucocorticoids have persistent effects on offspring social phenotype irrespective of opportunity for social buffering. Journal of Animal Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70121. Maternal effects can have wide-ranging effects on offspring phenotypes. Understanding if there are ways to ameliorate negative effects of poor early lives including maternal stress is a critical outstanding question. For example, the social buffering hypothesis predicts that individuals can reduce the negative effects of poor early lives with positive later life social environments. MacLeod et al. (2025) tested this hypothesis in a facultatively social lizard, Liopholis whitii, with a full-sibling split brood breeding design. They found evidence for social buffering of postnatal activity, but not for size, growth or social interactions. Instead, prenatal glucocorticoid exposure is a strong predictor of increased social interactions as well as decreased size and growth. Their results suggest that for many phenotypes, a poor early start can lead to lifelong effects, but for others, positive social environments could ameliorate negative early lives. Future work is needed to build a framework to predict which phenotypes have propensities for longer term social buffering to assess agents of selection and pathways for interventions.