Development of a modified cortisol extraction procedure for intermediately sized fish not amenable to whole-body or plasma extraction methods.

The corticosteroid hormone cortisol is the central mediator of the teleost stress response. Therefore, the accurate quantification of cortisol in teleost fishes is a vital tool for addressing fundamental questions about an animal's physiological response to environmental stressors. Conventional steroid extraction methods using plasma or whole-body homogenates, however, are inefficient within an intermediate size range of fish that are too small for phlebotomy and too large for whole-body steroid extractions.

Transgenerational cross-tolerance to stress: parental exposure to predators increases offspring contaminant tolerance.

Transgenerational effects of stressors can have important implications for offspring fitness and the responses of offspring to future stressful conditions. Parental effects, a common type of transgenerational effect, are non-genetic influences on offspring phenotype that result from parental phenotypes or environments. Little is known, however, about how parental exposure to a stressor effects offspring responses to other stressors despite this type of multi-stressor scenario being common.