Temporal stability in American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) white blood cells following capture and handling stress

Determining the physiological effects of stressors on organisms is essential to understand how human activities may impact environmental health. American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis, Daudin, 1802) are long-lived, top trophic carnivores inhabiting aquatic environments in the southeastern USA. Because of this, they may serve as important indicators of environmental health. Capture or trapping of crocodilians, including alligators, may be a dangerous and arduous task both for those capturing the crocodilian and the crocodilian itself, possibly affecting the parameters used to evaluate stress/health in an individual. To better characterize how capture and trapping of crocodilians affect physiological parameters, we investigated the effect of capture on white blood cell counts at four distinct time points. The majority of WBC counts, except for basophils, were unaffected (p > 0.05) by capture stress for up to 2 hours following initial capture. These results provide further support that crocodilian WBCs are temporally stable parameters that are useful for investigating exposure to long-term stressors.