Fluctuating asymmetry could be reliable proxy for oxidative stress in vertebrates
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Evolutionary Studies, Veterinary Medicine, Zoology
- Keywords
- Ecological Indicators, Developmental Instability, Physiological Stress, Sus scrofa
- Copyright
- © 2014 Canovas et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Fluctuating asymmetry could be reliable proxy for oxidative stress in vertebrates. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e616v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.616v1
Abstract
The study of fluctuating asymmetry (FA) in living organisms has produced contradictory results over the past few decades. Though the protocol for measuring FA is firmly established, the sources of FA remain unclear in many cases. Our goal is to study the relationship between FA and both the concentration of biomarkers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the body condition in a medium-sized mammal, the European wild boar (Sus scrofa). Using a Partial Least Squares regression (PLSr) we found a positive significant relationship between oxidative stress and FA but a negative relationship between oxidative stress and body condition of boar. Our results may suggest that FA can be used to assess the physiological cost associated with oxidative stress in mammals.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.