Although scientists have discovered many fundamental physiological and behavioral mechanisms that comprise the stress response, most of current knowledge is based on laboratory experiments using domesticated or captive animals. Scientists are only beginning, however, to understand how stress impacts wild animals - by studying the nature of the stressful stimuli that animals in their natural environments have adapted to for survival, and what the mechanisms that allow that survival might be. This book summarizes, for the first time, several decades of work on understanding stress in natural contexts. The aim is two-fold. The first goal of this work is to place modern stress research into an evolutionary context. The stress response clearly did not evolve to cause disease, so that studying how animals use the stress response to survive in the wild should provide insight into why mechanisms evolved the way that they did. The second goal is to provide predictions on how wild animals might cope with the Anthropocene, the current period of Earth's history characterized by the massive human remodeling of habitats on a global scale. Conservation of species will rely upon how wild animals use their stress response to successfully cope with human-created stressors.

PART I. Biology of StressChapter 1: Environment and the Earth: A Stressful PlanetChapter 2: Mediators of StressChapter 3: Models of StressChapter 4: Classic Stress ResponseChapter 5: Impacts on Physiological and Behavioral SystemsPART II. Coping with a Capricious EnvironmentChapter 6: Field TechniquesChapter 7: Responses to Natural Perturbations: Variation in Available EnergyChapter 8: Responses to Natural Perturbations: Tempests-Weather and Climate EventsChapter 9: Responses to Natural Perturbations: Poxes, Predators, and PersonalitiesChapter 10. Modulation of the Adrenocortical Response to StressChapter 11: Development, Environmental, and Maternal EffectsChapter 12: Global Change: Consequences of Human DisturbanceChapter 13: Global Change: Conservation Implications and the Role of Stress PhysiologyChapter 14: Conclusions and the FutureIndex