LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Oxidative Challenges of Avian Migration: A Comparative Field Study on a Partial Migrant

Photo from wikipedia

Most avian migrants alternate flight bouts, characterized by high metabolic rates, with stopovers, periods of fuel replenishment through hyperphagia. High-energy metabolism and excessive calorie intake shift the balance between damaging… Click to show full abstract

Most avian migrants alternate flight bouts, characterized by high metabolic rates, with stopovers, periods of fuel replenishment through hyperphagia. High-energy metabolism and excessive calorie intake shift the balance between damaging prooxidants and antioxidants toward the former. Hence, migration likely affects the oxidative balance of birds. Migratory flight indeed appears to cause oxidative damage; however, whether migration affects the oxidative state of birds at stopover is unclear. Therefore, we compared total nonenzymatic antioxidant capacity (AOX) and malondialdehyde concentration (MDA; a measure of lipid peroxidation) in the plasma of migrant and resident common blackbirds. We also determined plasmatic uric acid (UA) and fatty acid (FA) concentrations and calculated a FA peroxidation index. Birds were sampled during autumn migration at a stopover site that also supports a sedentary blackbird population. Migrants had higher AOX than residents, also after correcting for UA concentration. Migrants tended to have higher FA peroxidation indexes than residents, indicating that the energy source of migrants contains higher concentrations of peroxidizable FAs. However, the two groups did not differ in MDA concentration, also not after correcting for peroxidation index. Peroxidation-corrected MDA concentration was negatively correlated with UA-corrected AOX. In other words, individuals with low nonenzymatic AOX suffered more from lipid peroxidation than individuals with high nonenzymatic AOX. These results together indicate that migrant blackbirds invest in antioxidant defenses to reduce oxidative damage to lipids, likely representing an adaptation to diminish the physiological costs of migration.

Keywords: oxidative challenges; challenges avian; peroxidation; migration; concentration; aox

Journal Title: Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.