Description

Changes in the physiological health of species are an essential indicator of changing conditions and environmental challenges. Reponses to environmental challenges can often induce stress, influence physiology, and change metabolism in organisms. Here we tested blood chemistry parameters indicative of stress and metabolic activity using an i-STAT point-of-care blood analyzer in seven populations of free-ranging rock iguanas exposed to varying levels of tourism and supplemental feeding. We found significant differences in blood chemistry (glucose, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hematocrit, hemoglobin, calcium, potassium, and biliverdin levels) among populations exposed to varying levels of tourism, and also some variation between sexes and reproductive states. However, different variables are not directly related with one another, suggesting that the causal physiological pathways driving tourism-induced differences are influenced by mechanisms that are not detected by common analyses of blood chemistry. Future work should investigate upstream regulators of these factors affected by tourism. Regardless, these blood metrics are known to be both stress-sensitive and related to metabolic activity, suggesting exposure to tourism and associated supplemental feeding by tourists are generally driven by stress-related changes in blood chemistry, biliverdin, and metabolism.

Author ORCID Identifier

Susannah French https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8923-9728

Document Type

Dataset

DCMI Type

Dataset

File Format

.csv

Publication Date

7-19-2022

Funder

NSF, Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS)

Publisher

Utah State University

Award Number

NSF, Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) 1752908

Award Title

Collaborative Research: The interplay between host diet, immunity, reproduction, and the microbiome across an anthropogenic-disturbed landscape

Methodology

Brief description of collection and processing of data: Physiological blood parameters of free-living rock iguanas

Start Date

5-17-2019

End Date

6-9-2019

Language

eng

Code Lists

See README.

Disciplines

Biology

License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26078/7tjp-yp51

Checksum

c2f4d3c5604dc66679b3353fb9ca70c1

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Additional Files

ReadMe_Template.txt (4 kB)
701336b840f2c2c3da418a841813b655

Frenchetal_istat data 2019.csv (23 kB)
339088dd6c3ff25f638c4f7387945f12

Included in

Biology Commons

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