About this Research Topic

Background

Over the last few decades, demand for animal proteins has grown very quickly worldwide. While this has been accompanied by growth in farm production capacity, there has also been increased attention to sustainability, environmental issues and animal welfare across all farming systems. Animal welfare concerns have mainly focused on agonistic interactions, handling/transport, and the effects of environmental quality and stocking density. Exposure to suboptimal levels of such factors (stressors) triggers a cascade of biological events in the organisms, with the aim of providing the animal with the means to adapt to conditions. Long term activation of the stress response or exceeding an animal’s capacity to adapt, can lead to poor welfare.

Several studies and many worldwide researchers are focusing on the occurrence of eustress/distress in animals, evaluating physiological and behavioral responses.

Stress challenge studies can be useful both to deepen the knowledge on basic stress physiology and with regard to the evaluation of ways to increase animals' resilience.

The present Research Topic aims to collect contributions on Stress-Coping Styles (SCS): “a coherent set of individual physiological and behavioral differences in stress responses consistent across time and context”. SCS have already been characterized in several farmed and domestic animals, typically with a focus on the relationship among interindividual variability in SCS and other traits (i.e. behavioral ones), useful to predict and estimate animals' reactions to a stressor.

While the livestock sector is respectful of animals, it requires many unavoidable stressors (group changes, environmental change, transportation, etc.). Thus knowledge of the reactions of animals, predicting traits, and how these are driven by genetics, should open new scientifically validated strategies to improve animal welfare, or the development/introduction of new phenotypes in the current selection strategies of animals that will be able to cope better, when confronted with unavoidable stressors associated with husbandry.

This Research Topic aims to collect and report on the knowledge of SCS for different species and livestock production systems. In particular, contributions are welcome on:
· SCS screening,
· Physiological parameters linked to different SCS
· Release dynamic of primary endocrine and secondary metabolic stress response associated with different SCS
· Behavioral patterns linked to the SCS
· Production efficiency patterns in relation to SCS
· Genetic and genomic evaluations related to SCS

Keywords: animal welfare, stress, physiology, stress coping style, animal stress, animal personality

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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