Measuring stress in a heartbeat in spiny dogfish: Final Report: Brilliant Marine Research Idea 2024
Debaere, S. (2025). Measuring stress in a heartbeat in spiny dogfish: Final Report: Brilliant Marine Research Idea 2024. University of Antwerp: Antwerpen. 3 pp.
Given the global threats facing shark populations, a comprehensive understanding of their stress physiology and reliable indicators of chronic stress are urgently needed to inform and refine conservation efforts. In this study, we tested the overarching hypothesis that chronic stress alters energy mobilization in a representative shark species, the spiny dogfish (Squalus suckleyi). We applied a stress paradigm based on commonly encountered and easily reproducible stressors to experimentally induce the chronic phase of the stress response in adult male spiny dogfish over the course of a 3-week experiment. We subsequently aimed to validate heamatological metrics by monitoring the heart rate of the sharks during acute and chronic stress. Our data demonstrated that conventional vertebrate stress biomarkers may not reliably reflect chronic stress in sharks, and we introduced β-hydroxybutyrate as a potential novel biomarker for chronic stress in this and likely other species of sharks. These insights will be instrumental in devising management strategies that are vital for the conservation of shark populations both today and into the future.
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