Maternal Responses in the Face of Infection Risk.

When animals are sick, their physiology and behavior change in ways that can impact their offspring. Research is emerging showing that infection risk alone can also modify the physiology and behavior of healthy animals. If physiological responses to environments with high infection risk take place during reproduction, it is possible that they lead to maternal effects.

Female presence does not increase testosterone but still ameliorates sickness behaviours in male Japanese quail.

Infections can dramatically modify animal behaviour. The extent of these changes depends on an animal's environment. It has been proposed that testosterone modulates the suppression of behavioural symptoms of sickness under certain reproductive contexts.