DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4tmpg4fjg
title: Data from: Feather corticosterone is lower in translocated and historical populations of the endangered Laysan duck (Anas laysanensis)

description: Identifying reliable bioindicators of population status is a central goal
 of conservation physiology. Physiological stress measures are often used
 as metrics of individual health and can assist in managing endangered
 species if linked to fitness traits. We analysed feather corticosterone, a
 cumulative physiological stress metric, of individuals from historical,
 translocated, and source populations of an endangered endemic Hawaiian
 bird, the Laysan duck (Anas laysanensis). We hypothesised that feather
 corticosterone would reflect the improved reproduction and survival rates
 observed in populations translocated to Midway and Kure Atolls from Laysan
 Island. We also predicted less physiological stress in historical Laysan
 birds collected before ecological conditions deteriorated and the
 population bottleneck. All hypotheses were supported: we found lower
 feather corticosterone in the translocated populations and historical
 samples than in those from recent Laysan samples.  This suggests
 that current Laysan birds are experiencing greater physiological stress
 than historical Laysan and recently translocated birds. Our initial
 analysis suggests that feather corticosterone may be an indicator of
 population status and could be used as a non-invasive physiological
 monitoring tool for this species with further validation. Furthermore,
 these preliminary results, combined with published demographic data,
 suggest that current Laysan conditions may not be optimal for this
 species.
description: # Feather corticosterone is lower in translocated and historical
 populations of the endangered Laysan duck (Anas laysanensis)
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4tmpg4fjg](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4tmpg4fjg) ## Description of the data and file structure Table S1 - A .csv file containing all of the available information for each feather sample used in the analysis. This is the file from which the statistical analysis is run. Table S2 - A .csv file containing definitions and descriptions of all the variables included in the dataset. LADU_Feather_Cort_Analysis (Zenodo)- R Code used to analyze the feather corticosterone concentrations and create the results figure used in the paper. ## Sharing/Access information Also included as supplemental information with the manuscript ## Code/Software To run the analysis, you will need to have R version 4.3.1 or higher installed. R Studio version 20203.6.1.438 or higher is also helpful. Once you open the file, set the working directory to wherever you have stored the CSV data file. You will need the following packages installed to run the code: car, agricolae, ggplot2, ggpubr, wesanderson, tibble. They can be installed using the install.packages() function or found here: [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/available_packages_by_name.html#available-packages-C](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/available_packages_by_name.html#available-packages-C) You should be able to run the code line by line or all at once now. See annotations within the code for more information on each analysis step.