A University Had a Great Coronavirus Plan, but Students Partied On

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Breastfeeding Him Saved My Life!

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice nor am I advising anyone medically. I am sharing my story and

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How the Coronavirus Attacks the Brain

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AstraZeneca Pauses Vaccine Trial for Safety Review

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A New Theory Asks: Could a Mask Be a Crude ‘Vaccine’?

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New Paper: Energetic Limits

Shuert C., L. Halsey, P. Pomeroy, & S. Twiss (2020). Energetic limits: Defining the bounds and trade-offs of successful energy management in a capital breeder. Journal of Animal Ecology. Doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13312

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.13312

Managing energy balance through lactation

Managing energy inputs and outputs is central to all animal life. Often these trade-offs can matter more when provisioning dependent offspring with the energy they need to grow and develop.  Among mammals, mothers are typically the ones who have to spend tremendous amounts of energy on their offspring, particularly in providing milk.  An extreme example of these demands on the mother are seen in the true seals (phocids), such as the grey seal.  Even though a grey seal mother fasts during pup rearing, relying on stored reserves accumulated at sea, she can supply her pup with up to 18,000 kcal in energy rich milk every day of the 18 days needed to raise her pup to independence. Coping with this extreme energy output requires grey seal mothers to carefully balance how they use their finite resources so that their offspring receives as much as possible, while still keeping enough to maintain themselves in the process. Effectively, seal mothers are walking an energy tight rope. So, how do grey seal mothers achieve this balancing act?

Grey seal mothers return to the Isle of May each year in the autumn to give birth to and raise their pups with extremely energy dense milk over a short 18-day lactation using only their bodily energy reserves (photo: C. Shuert).

We can examine how a mother allocates her reserves between background energy demands, such as those relating to metabolic rate or milk production, and energy spent on daily activity and other processes.  Given that grey seal mothers do not feed while raising their pups, we would expect mothers who are able to spend less on daily activities will be able to direct more to their pups. Our approach used remotely detected changes in seal heart rates (as a measure of energy expenditure) to examine this trade-off.  We attached heart rate monitors to known mothers at the Isle of May (Scotland) in 3 successive years. Heart rate data from these monitors provided us with  daily energy expenditure (mean daily heart rate) and background energy expenditures (minimum mean daily heart rate) for 52 seals.  We were interested in how individuals balanced mean and minimum heart rate while raising their pups, what limits there were to this trade-off, and how local environment (such as weather) might affect the trade-off.

Grey seal mothers balance energy demands through compensation – that is, during periods of high activity, background energy demands are down-regulated and vice versa. These trade-offs help to maintain consistent daily energy expenditure to maintain this extreme energy demands of lactation in this species (photo: C. Shuert).

What did we find?

1. As we expected grey seal mothers typically exhibit what is known as ‘energy compensation’ during lactation. This means that within each breeding season, during periods of high activity demands individuals decreased the amount of energy used for background costs and vice versa, resulting in an overall cap in daily energy expenditure during this period of high energy expenditure while fasting.
2.  Mothers who failed to  balance energy expenditures properly were more likely to end lactation earlier than expected.  While we could not directly measure the future success of pups, this lack of adequate balancing is likely to result in a negative outcome for pups.  A mother who spends less time nursing her pup is likely to produce a smaller pup, and this  reduces the chances of the pup surviving to adulthood.
3. We also found that individual mothers tended to show similar patterns of energy balance across years, indicating that these strategies may be individualistic and repeatable.
4. Our multi-seasonal data also indicated that environmental stressors, in particular warmer weather, can influence how well mothers are able to balance their energy demands. In a time of increasingly unpredictable climate these findings suggest that more mothers may struggle to adequately manage their energy balance successfully under extreme environmental conditions.

Multiseason data for these energy management strategies appear to indicate that environmental stressors can influence how well mothers are able to maintain energy compensation (photo: C. Shuert).

Importance: The approach we use here can be used more widely as metrics to uncover how different stresses on wild animals, including human induced changes to their environment, impact their ability to successfully manage their energy balance which is critical to breeding success.

Written by: Dr. Courtney Shuert

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My First Progress update!

So originally I wanted to publish this on Sunday, but life got in the way and so here we are. Hopefully this is a better late than never situation.

When I started this blog I wanted it to be half repository of information and resources and half personal updates and progress details. So far it’s mostly been information, but today we’re talking progress. If you’re squeamish this might not be the post for you. We’re going to get into the gritty details.

So first things first: why have your first progress update at four weeks into the process? Mostly because there wasn’t much to report prior to that. But last week things have really started kicking into high gear so now we have more to talk about. And I’m so excited to finally see some positive changes!

The first things I really started to notice were the physical changes. My areolas have gotten darker and are now the color of the perfect latte. The line defining my areola from the rest of my breast has become more defined and my Montgomery glands have become more raised. Interestingly my nipples have stayed the same rosy hue as my lips that they’ve always been. I’ve also noticed that they veining on my breasts has become more obvious. I’ve always had prominent veins on my chest (this is what happens when you’re the palest person you know) but now the veins on my breasts are not only darker, but also slightly raised looking. My breasts as a whole have a slightly different shape now too. When I need to pump they look bottom heavy and rounded, but after I empty them the shape is more relaxed and my nipples point more downward instead of forward. Speaking of my nipples they too have changed some. They haven’t changed size, to be honest they were pretty large to begin with, but they have gotten more dense. When I would squeeze them between my fingers before they felt like I was just pinching some extra skin, but now it feels like there is a more rigid density to them-especially at the tip.

The next thing I have really been noticing has been an increase in my volume of milk. At the beginning of last week I was producing perhaps a couple mL. Then by the end of last week I was producing almost an ounce. Finally today I just expressed in ONE SITTING what used to take me all day to make. I’m finding that I can tell when it’s time to pump now just based on what my breasts feel like. There is a deep ache in my breasts if I put off pumping or expressing for too long. It’s throughout the breasts in general but I especially feel it right behind my nipple. I’m really excited that I’m seeing such increases so early on, but I’m also trying to temper my excitement because I don’t want to be disappointed if it doesn’t keep up this pace.

And finally the other thing I’ve noticed is that I think about sex a lot more. I find myself lost in thinking about when my next suckling session with my spouse will be, when I should be doing dishes or working on my various projects. I never was one prone to random midday fantasies, but now I find myself counting the minutes until my nipple can be in my spouse’s mouth again. Pumping is great, but there really is no ecstasy quite like suckling the one you love.

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