Abstract:
Individuals use cues in their environment to make decisions about optimal life history strategies in changing environments. Recent work has identified hormones as key regulatory molecules to transduce external environmental cues into adaptive behavioral responses. However, most work has focused on the role of a single environmental cue and its relevant hormonal pathways, despite the fact that individuals likely must integrate cues from multiple sources to make adaptive decisions in the wild. Here, I investigate how two important environmental cues, social density and food availability are integrated to influence life-history plasticity in red squirrels. We used long term data to identify sources of variation in reproductive traits. I then explore a potential hormonal mechanism underlying this variation. I will discuss my preliminary findings and explore future directions for understanding how multiple hormone pathways interact to elicit behavioral responses in the wild.