Relaxing life of the city? Allostatic load in yellow-bellied marmots along a rural-urban continuum.

Urban environments are expanding. As rural areas are urbanized, animals living in those environments must respond. Examinations of ecological responses to urbanization are abundant, but much less work has focused on the physiological responses driving those ecological patterns, particularly in mammals. Whether an animal interprets urbanized environments as stressful or not can help us understand, and even predict, the likelihood of individuals persisting in urbanized areas. Unpredictable events can cause stress and responses to such events can deplete limited stores of energy. Differences between required and available energy is termed allostatic load and is an indicator of stress. Allostatic load, and hence stress, is correlated with baseline levels of the metabolic hormones, glucocorticoids. We examined allostatic load in yellow-bellied marmots along a rural-urban gradient through analysis of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs). We used GIS data and 'on-the-ground' measurements to quantify the degree of urbanization. We collected fecal samples from males and females of all age classes at six sites along this continuum. Female marmots had higher FGMs than males. All age groups of marmots exhibited a parabolic relationship between the degree of urbanization and FGM levels. In general, adult marmots had higher FGMs in more rural than urban environments, and both juveniles and yearlings had exhibited higher FGM levels in more urban environments.

Genome Sequences of Cluster K Mycobacteriophages DrHayes, Urkel, and SamuelLPlaqson.

Mycobacteriophages DrHayes, Urkel, and SamuelLPlaqson were isolated from soil samples in Spokane, WA, using Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2155 grown at room temperature. The three genomes differ by only a few nucleotides, are 60,526 bp long, have 97 predicted protein-coding genes and one tRNA gene, and are members of subcluster K1.