PHYSIOLOGICAL ECOLOGY - ORIGINAL RESEARCH Modulation of the adrenocortical response to acute stress with respect to brood value, reproductive success and survival in the Eurasian hoopoe Baptiste Schmid • Laura Tam-Dafond • Susanne Jenni-Eiermann • Raphae ¨l Arlettaz • Michael Schaub • Lukas Jenni Received: 30 March 2012 / Accepted: 14 January 2013 / Published online: 6 February 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract Reproducing parents face the difficult chal- lenge of trading-off investment in current reproduction against presumed future survival and reproduction. Glu- cocorticoids are supposed to mediate this trade-off because the adrenocortical response to stress disrupts normal reproductive behaviour in favour of self-maintenance and own survival. According to the brood-value hypothesis, individuals with a low survival probability until the next reproductive season have to invest in current reproduction, a process driven by a down-regulation of their adrenocor- tical response. If the adrenocortical response to stress effectively mediates the trade-off between current repro- duction versus future survival and reproduction, we expect a negative relationship with reproductive success and a positive correlation of the adrenocortical stress response with survival. We studied the relationship between corti- costerone secretion in parents and their current brood value, reproductive success and survival in a short-lived multi-brooded bird, the Eurasian hoopoe Upupa epops. The adrenocortical response to acute handling stress was cor- related with the brood value within the individual (first and second broods of the year) and between individuals. Birds breeding late in the season mounted a lower total cortico- sterone response to acute stress than birds breeding earlier, while females showed lower levels than males. We observed a negative relationship between the adrenocorti- cal stress response and rearing success or fledging success in females, as predicted by the brood-value hypothesis. However, we could not evidence a clear link between the adrenocortical stress response and survival. Future research testing the brood-value hypothesis and trade-offs between current reproduction and future survival should also mea- sure free corticosterone and carefully differentiate between cross-sectional (i.e. between-individual) and individual- based experimental studies. Keywords Corticosterone Á Life-history trade-off Á Reproductive success Á Survival Á Upupa epops Introduction Central to life-history theory is the trade-off between investment in current reproduction versus future survival and reproduction (Stearns 1992). According to this tenet, parents balance the costs and benefits of investment into current reproduction against the probability of their own survival and the presumed costs and benefits of future reproduction (Williams 1966). One hormonal mechanism that is likely to mediate this trade-off is the stress response triggered by the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (Wingfield et al. 1998; Wingfield and Sapolsky 2003). Communicated by Pawel Koteja. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-013-2598-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. B. Schmid Á L. Tam-Dafond Á S. Jenni-Eiermann Á M. Schaub Á L. Jenni (&) Swiss Ornithological Institute, Seerose 1, 6204 Sempach, Switzerland e-mail: lukas.jenni@vogelwarte.ch R. Arlettaz Valais Field Station, Swiss Ornithological Institute, Rue du Rho ˆne 11, 1950 Sion, Switzerland R. Arlettaz Division of Conservation Biology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, 3012 Bern, Switzerland 123 Oecologia (2013) 173:33–44 DOI 10.1007/s00442-013-2598-7