..., are these reaction norms themselves consistent over time, i.e. repeatable? Here, we quantified individual baseline glucocorticoid responses in house sparrows, Passer domesticus , to sequential manipulations of temperature, wind speed and food unpredictability that were repeated in discrete blocks of sampling under...

... compartments: an intercellular matrix and a monolayer of covalently bound lipids (CBLs) attached to the outer surface of the corneocytes. We previously found two classes of sphingolipids, ceramides and cerebrosides, covalently bound to corneocytes in the SC of house sparrows ( Passer domesticus L...

... be crucial for the establishment of a competent permeability barrier. In this study we assessed the composition of covalently bound lipids of the avian SC and their relationship to cutaneous water loss (CWL) in two populations of house sparrows, one living in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and the other...

...Agustí Muñoz-Garcia; Jennifer Ro; Johnie C. Brown; Joseph B. Williams SUMMARY Because cutaneous water loss (CWL) represents half of total water loss in birds, selection to reduce CWL may be strong in desert birds. We previously found that CWL of house sparrows from a desert population was about...