Frances Bonier

Frances Bonier
Queen's University | QueensU · Department of Biology

PhD

About

104
Publications
21,615
Reads
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4,146
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 1999 - September 2001
University of Idaho
Position
  • Master's Student
September 2006 - September 2010
Virginia Tech
Position
  • PostDoc Position
September 2001 - August 2006
University of Washington
Position
  • PhD Student

Publications

Publications (104)
Article
Full-text available
Population declines of organisms are widespread and severe, but some species' populations have remained stable, or even increased. The reasons some species are less vulnerable to population decline than others are not well understood. Species that tolerate urban environments often have a broader environmental tolerance, which, along with their abil...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding how the abundance of species varies across geographical ranges is central to ecology; however, few studies test hypotheses using detailed abundance estimates across the full ranges of species on a continental scale. Here, we use unprecedented, detailed estimates of breeding abundance for North American birds (eBird) to test two hypoth...
Article
After twenty years of studies of endocrine traits in animals living in cities, the field of urban endocrinology has built a robust literature including numerous studies looking for signatures of the effects of urban living, usually in mean circulating hormone concentrations. The findings of this past research have primarily demonstrated the absence...
Article
Full-text available
When hosts have a long coevolutionary history with their parasites, fitness costs of chronic infection have often been assumed to be negligible. Yet, experimental manipulation of infections sometimes reveals effects of parasites on their hosts, particularly during reproduction. Whether these effects translate into fitness costs remains unclear. Her...
Article
Full-text available
As cities expand across the globe, understanding factors that underlie variation in urban tolerance is vital for predicting changes in patterns of biodiversity. Endocrine traits, like circulating hormone concentrations and regulation of endocrine responses, might contribute to variation in species' ability to cope with urban challenges. For example...
Article
Full-text available
Species vary in their responses to urban habitat; most species avoid these environments, whereas others tolerate or even thrive in them. To better characterize the extent to which species vary in their responses to urban habitat (from this point forwards “urban tolerance”), we used several methods to quantify these responses at a continental scale...
Article
Full-text available
The golden-crowned (Zonotrichia atricapilla) and white-crowned (Z. leucophrys) sparrows have been presented as a compelling case for rapid speciation. They display divergence in song and plumage with overlap in their breeding ranges implying reproductive isolation, but have almost identical mitochondrial genomes. Previous research proposed hybridiz...
Article
Habitat partitioning can facilitate the coexistence of closely related species and often results from competitive interference inducing plastic shifts of subordinate species in response to aggressive, dominant species (plasticity) or the evolution of ecological differences in subordinate species that reduce their ability to occupy habitats where th...
Article
Full-text available
Many biological studies require the capture of individuals for sampling, for example for measurement of morphological or physiological traits, or for marking individuals for later observations. Capture methods employed often vary both within and between studies, and these differing methods could be more or less effective in capture of different ind...
Preprint
Full-text available
The golden-crowned (Zonotrichia atricapilla) and white-crowned (Z. leucophrys) sparrows have been presented as a compelling case for rapid speciation. They display divergence in song and plumage with overlap in their breeding ranges implying reproductive isolation, but have almost identical mitochondrial genomes. Previous research proposed hybridiz...
Chapter
Organisms living in urban environments are exposed to many novel, sometimes beneficial, but most often challenging conditions. These conditions include increased exposure to chemical pollution, artificial light at night, noise, altered pathogen and predator communities, increased abundance of often poor quality food, increased temperature, and incr...
Article
In birds, exposure to exogenous testosterone during embryonic development can suppress measures of immune function; however, it is unclear whether these effects are due to direct or indirect action via aromatization. Estradiol (E2) is synthesized from testosterone by the enzyme aromatase, and this conversion is a necessary step in many signaling pa...
Article
Full-text available
Population decline and the threat of extinction are realities currently facing many species. Yet, in most cases, the detailed demographic data necessary to identify causes of population decline are unavailable. Using 43 years (1975−2017) of data from a box-nesting population of tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor), we identified reduced survival of...
Article
Reproduction is an energetically demanding life history stage that requires costly physiological and behavioral changes, yet some individuals will invest more into reproduction and breed more successfully than others. To understand variation in reproductive investment, previous studies have evaluated factors during breeding, but conditions outside...
Article
Endocrine traits (e.g., circulating hormone concentrations, receptor expression) can vary considerably among individuals within populations. Here, we develop two evolutionary hypotheses to explain this variation. Under the Optimal Endocrine Phenotype Hypothesis, adaptive plastic responses to environmental variation generate individual variation in...
Article
Consumer innovation, that is, the acquisition and consumption of novel food types, has received little attention, despite its predominance among animal innovations and its potential implications for the ecology and evolution of species in a changing world. Results of the few studies that have investigated individual responses to novel foods suggest...
Article
Full-text available
Synopsis Reference to glucocorticoids as “stress hormones” has been growing in prevalence in the literature, including in comparative and environmental endocrinology. Although glucocorticoids are elevated in response to a variety of stressors in vertebrate animals, the primary functions of glucocorticoids are not responding to stressors and they ar...
Article
Full-text available
Individual variation in parasite defences, such as resistance and tolerance, can underlie heterogeneity in fitness and could influence disease transmission dynamics. Glucocorticoid hormone concentrations often change in response to fluctuating environmental conditions and mediate changes in immune function, resource allocation and tissue repair. Th...
Article
Full-text available
As species shift their ranges and phenology to cope with climate change, many are left without a ready supply of their preferred food source during critical life stages. Food shortages are often assumed to be driven by reduced total food abundance, but here we propose that climate change may cause short-term food shortages for foraging specialists...
Article
Full-text available
Flight initiation distance (FID)–the distance at which an individual leaves in response to the approach of a perceived threat–provides a measurement of risk-taking behavior. If individuals optimize their FID, this distance should reflect the point at which the fitness resulting from leaving exceeds the fitness resulting from all other possible deci...
Data
Graphical software demonstrating the optimal strategy of a parent based on changing probability of offspring death (PN(x)) and cost from lost parental care (Cp(x)). Here we provide a link to a Desmos plane that shows all possible combinations of the two functions associated with sequences to the nest from a parent leaving. Orange space represents w...
Data
Graphical software demonstrating the optimal strategy of a parent based on changing residual (f) and current (b) reproductive values. Here we provide a link to a Desmos plane that shows all possible combinations of reproductive values. Orange space represents when the optimal strategy is to stay at the nest and white space represents when the optim...
Data
Graphical software demonstrating the optimal strategy of a parent based on changing probabilities of death to the parent from staying (pn) and leaving (Pd(x)) the nest. Here we provide a link to a Desmos plane that shows all possible combinations of probability of death to the parent. Orange space represents when the optimal strategy is to stay at...
Data
Graphical software to evaluate changes in the fitness functions resulting from a change in the various parameters. Here we provide a link to a Desmos graph where all of the functions and parameters are listed. Individual sliders can be adjusted to visualize the change in optimum flight initiation distance strategy. (DOCX)
Article
Full-text available
Biparental care presents an interesting case of cooperation and conflict between unrelated individuals. Several models have been proposed to explain how parents should respond to changes in each other’s parental care to maximize their own fitness, predicting no change, partial compensation, or matching effort as a response. Here, we present an expe...
Article
Significance Urban environments are expanding worldwide, impacting the populations of many organisms. Understanding how and why species are affected by urbanization is thus an important goal. We examined the role of direct competitive interactions among species on the response of bird species to urbanization. We found evidence that urban-adapted, s...
Article
Full-text available
Bird species around the world are threatened with extinction. In North America, aerial insectivores are experiencing particularly severe population declines. To conserve these species, we need to know which life stages have the largest influence on population growth. We monitored a box-nesting population of Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) from...
Article
Full-text available
As urban areas continue to grow, understanding how species respond and adapt to urban habitats is becoming increasingly important. Knowledge of the mechanisms behind observed phenotypic changes of urban-dwelling animals will enable us to better evaluate the impact of urbanization on current and future generations of wildlife and predict how animals...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract ∙ Many tropical birds have slow‐paced life history strategies, exhibiting lower metabolic rates, reduced annual investment in reproduction, and longer lifespans relative to birds at higher latitudes. Life history strategies have been relatively well documented in adult individuals in the tropics, but we know comparatively little about the...
Article
Full-text available
We often expect that investigations of the patterns, causes, and consequences of among-individual variation in a trait of interest will reveal how selective pressures or ecological conditions influence that trait. However, many endocrine traits, such as concentrations of glucocorticoid (GC) hormones, exhibit adaptive plasticity and, therefore, do n...
Data
Schoenemann & Bonier full dataset
Data
Supplemental Tables Results from statistical analyses.
Data
Supplemental Figure 1A Funnel plot of all glucocorticoid (GC) repeatability estimates and sample sizes for (A) every study included in the meta-analysis and (B) every study with a sample size less than 150. Repeatability of initial GCs are represented with open circles, response GCs with open triangles, and integrated GCs with closed squares. In th...
Preprint
Full-text available
In birds, exposure to testosterone during embryonic development can suppress immune function; however, it is unclear whether this is caused by direct stimulation of androgen receptors. Estradiol is synthesized from testosterone by the enzyme aromatase, and this conversion is a necessary step in many signaling pathways that are ostensibly testostero...
Preprint
Full-text available
We often expect that investigations of the patterns, causes, and consequences of among-individual variation in a trait of interest will reveal how selective pressures or ecological conditions influence that trait. However, many endocrine traits, such as concentrations of glucocorticoid (GC) hormones, exhibit adaptive plasticity and, therefore, do n...
Preprint
Full-text available
We often expect that investigations of the patterns, causes, and consequences of among-individual variation in a trait of interest will reveal how selective pressures or ecological conditions influence that trait. However, many endocrine traits, such as concentrations of glucocorticoid (GC) hormones, exhibit adaptive plasticity and, therefore, do n...
Preprint
Full-text available
Biparental care presents an interesting case of cooperation and conflict between unrelated individuals. Several models have been proposed to explain how parents should respond to changes in each other’s parental care to maximize their own fitness, predicting no change, partial compensation, or matching effort as a response. Here, we present an expe...
Article
Full-text available
Chronic, low‐intensity parasite infections can reduce host fitness through negative impacts on reproduction and survival, even if they produce few overt symptoms. As a result, these parasites can influence the evolution of host morphology, behaviour and physiology. The physiological consequences of chronic infection can provide insight into the pro...
Article
Glucocorticoid hormones allow individuals to rapidly adjust their physiology and behavior to meet the challenges of a variable environment. An individual’s baseline concentration of glucocorticoids can reflect shifts in life history stage and resource demands while mediating a suite of physiological and behavioral changes that include immune modula...
Article
Upon hearing a conspecific signal, animals must assess their relationship with the signaller and respond appropriately. Territorial animals usually respond more aggressively to strangers than neighbors in a phenomenon known as the "dear enemy effect". This phenomenon likely evolved because strangers represent a threat to an animal's territory tenur...
Article
Glucocorticoid hormones facilitate responses to environmental challenges by mediating diverse physiological and behavioral changes, including resource mobilization and altered reproductive effort. Elevated glucocorticoids might indicate that an individual is facing high levels of environmental challenges and thus, elevated concentrations might be a...
Article
Full-text available
Life-history theory predicts that optimal strategies of parental investment will depend on ecological and social factors, such as current brood value and offspring need. Parental care strategies are also likely to be mediated in part by the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and glucocorticoid hormones. Here, we present an experiment in tree swall...
Article
Full-text available
An evolutionary perspective can enrich almost any endeavour in biology, providing a deeper understanding of the variation we see in nature. To this end, evolutionary endocrinologists seek to describe the fitness consequences of variation in endocrine traits. Much of the recent work in our field, however, follows a flawed approach to the study of ho...
Preprint
Full-text available
Life history theory predicts that optimal strategies of parental investment will depend on ecological and social factors such as current brood value and offspring need. Parental care strategies are also likely to be mediated in part by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and glucocorticoid hormones. Here we present an experiment in tree s...
Article
Synopsis All organisms must anticipate and balance energetic demands and available resources in order to maximize fitness. As hormones coordinate many interactions between an organism’s internal condition and the external environment, they may be key in mediating the allocation of resources to meet these demands. However, given that individuals dif...
Article
Evolutionary endocrinology represents a synthesis between comparative endocrinology and evolutionary genetics. This synthesis can be viewed through the breeder’s equation, a cornerstone of quantitative genetics that, in its univariate form, states that a population’s evolutionary response is the product of the heritability of a trait and selection...
Article
Begging calls provide a way for parents to gauge offspring state. Although temperature is known to affect call production, previous studies have not examined the influence of ambient temperature at the nest. We recorded ambient temperature and begging calls of 3 day-old tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Our results indicate that typical daily te...
Article
Full-text available
Habitats worldwide are increasingly being degraded by human activities, with environmental pollution representing a significant threat to species and ecosystems. The presence of persistent organic chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), has generated concern. Captive experiments and field studies have reported some evidence for detrime...
Article
Sexually selected traits can signal an individual's ability to contribute offspring care. Differential allocation theory posits that when these same traits also influence brood value, it may be adaptive for partners to adjust care in response to their mates' traits. Evaluating the strength and direction of parental quality signalling and differenti...
Article
Full-text available
Studies of animal behavior often rely on human observation, which introduces a number of limitations on sampling. Recent developments in automated logging of behaviors make it possible to circumvent some of these problems. Once verified for efficacy and accuracy, these automated systems can be used to determine optimal sampling regimes for behavior...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies of animal behavior often rely on human observation, which introduces a number of limitations on sampling. Recent developments in automated logging of behaviors make it possible to circumvent some of these problems. Once verified for efficacy and accuracy, these automated systems can be used to determine optimal sampling regimes for behavior...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies of animal behavior often rely on human observation, which introduces a number of limitations on sampling. Recent developments in automated logging of behaviors make it possible to circumvent some of these problems. Once verified for efficacy and accuracy, these automated systems can be used to determine optimal sampling regimes for behavior...
Article
Full-text available
Climatic selective pressures are thought to dominate biotic selective pressures at higher latitudes. However, few studies have experimentally tested how these selective pressures differentially act on traits across latitudes because traits can rarely be manipulated independently of the organism in nature. We overcame this challenge by using an exte...
Article
Full-text available
Background Unpredictable and inclement weather is increasing in strength and frequency, challenging organisms to respond adaptively. One way in which animals respond to environmental challenges is through the secretion of glucocorticoid stress hormones. These hormones mobilize energy stores and suppress non-essential physiological and behavioral pr...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies of animal behavior often rely on human observation, which introduces a number of limitations on sampling. Recent developments in automated logging of behaviors make it possible to circumvent some of these problems. Once verified for efficacy and accuracy, these automated systems can be used to determine optimal sampling regimes for behavior...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies of animal behavior often rely on human observation, which introduces a number of limitations on sampling. Recent developments in automated logging of behaviors make it possible to circumvent some of these problems. Once verified for efficacy and accuracy, these automated systems can be used to determine optimal sampling regimes for behavior...
Article
Full-text available
Playbacks of visual or audio stimuli to wild animals is a widely used experimental tool in behavioral ecology. In many cases, however, playback experiments are constrained by observer limitations such as the time observers can be present, or the accuracy of observation. These problems are particularly apparent when playbacks are triggered by specif...
Preprint
Full-text available
Carrying out playbacks of visual or audio stimuli to wild animals is a widely used experimental tool in behavioral ecology. In many cases, however, playback experiments are constrained by observer limitations such as the time observers can be present, or the accuracy of observation. These problems are particularly apparent when playbacks are trigge...
Preprint
Carrying out playbacks of visual or audio stimuli to wild animals is a widely used experimental tool in behavioral ecology. In many cases, however, playback experiments are constrained by observer limitations such as the time observers can be present, or the accuracy of observation. These problems are particularly apparent when playbacks are trigge...
Article
Full-text available
Highly plastic endocrine traits are thought to play a central role in allowing organisms to respond rapidly to environmental change. Yet, not all individuals display the same degree of plasticity in these traits, and the costs of this individual variation in plasticity are unknown. We studied individual differences in corticosterone levels under va...
Article
Abstract Mating systems can vary among species and populations and thus influence evolutionary trajectories, ecological traits, and population demography. The siring of offspring by an extrapair male, or extrapair paternity (EPP), is a widespread and varied phenomenon in all vertebrate classes. However, we do not understand all of the factors assoc...
Article
Full-text available
Into this memoir, field biologist Greene weaves the natural history of snakes and the importance of sharing a love of nature with people.
Article
The latitudinal increase in extra-pair paternity (EPP) rates in birds suggests broad selective benefits to low EPP rates in the tropics. However, we have few EPP data from tropical birds, particularly from species with close relatives at high latitudes. Here, we report EPP rates in two resident equatorial populations of rufous-collared sparrow Zono...
Article
Summary 1. We evaluate the utility of measuring corticosteroid-binding globulins (CBG) and estimating free glucocorticoid (GC) concentrations for field endocrine studies. We assert that for three general reasons, measurement of free GCs might not be more useful than total GCs for many studies. 2. First, estimates of so-called ‘free’ GCs are likely...
Article
Full-text available
The world is rapidly changing, and is exhibiting increased variability in environmental conditions. One of the grand challenges of current biology is to understand how, and predict which species will be able to cope with uncertain environments. The goal of this symposium was to explore how integrating physiological mechanisms with behavior and evol...
Article
Full-text available
Data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) suggest that populations of aerial insectivorous birds are declining, particularly in northeastern regions of the continent, and particularly since the mid-1980s. Species that use nest boxes, such as Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor), may provide researchers with large data sets that better...
Article
Full-text available
Polymorphisms of the juvenal plumage in birds have received little study in comparison to other plumages. We investigate a polymorphism in the juvenal plumage of the Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) in southeastern Ontario, Canada. Yellow Warblers in juvenal plumage show either yellow or white plumage on their lower ventral surface of the neck,...
Article
Urbanization dramatically changes the landscape, presenting organisms with novel challenges and often leading to reduced species diversity. Urban ecologists have documented numerous biotic and abiotic consequences of urbanization, such as altered climate, species interactions, and community composition, but we lack an understanding of the mechanism...
Article
Hormones play a central role in integrating internal and external cues to help mediate life-history decisions as well as changes in behavior and physiology of individuals. Describing the consistency of endocrine traits within and among individuals is an important step for understanding whether hormonal traits are dependable predictors of phenotypes...
Article
Full-text available
In addition to the observed high diversity of species in the tropics, divergence among populations of the same species exists over short geographic distances in both phenotypic traits and neutral genetic markers. Divergence among populations suggests great potential for the evolution of reproductive isolation and eventual speciation. In birds, song...
Article
Full-text available
Variation in baseline glucocorticoid (cort) levels can be attributed, at least in part, to differences in energetic demands confronting individuals. Elevated baseline cort levels are routinely interpreted as indicating individuals in poor condition, with low relative fitness. However, when greater reproductive effort increases energetic demands, in...
Article
Full-text available
The breeding biology of tropical birds is poorly known, especially in the high Andes. We present observations on the nesting of 76 species of birds from the Ecuadorian highlands (above 2,700 m). For many of these species this is the first breeding information available for Ecuador. We present detailed accounts for several species, including the fir...
Article
Full-text available
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Article
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Speciation rates for some taxa increase from the poles towards the equator, augmenting the number of species in the tropics. The causes of latitudinal variation in speciation rates are presently unknown. Here we present and discuss the Asynchrony of Seasons Hypothesis that invokes latitudinal differences in the spatial asynchrony of climate, and th...
Article
Glucocorticoid (cort) hormones are increasingly applied in studies of free-ranging animals, with elevated baseline cort levels generally assumed to indicate individuals or populations in worse condition and with lower fitness (the Cort-Fitness Hypothesis). The relationship between cort and fitness is rarely validated and studies investigating the c...