Female cichlids attack and avoid-but will still mate with-androgen receptor mutant males that lack male-typical body coloration.
Female cichlids attack and avoid-but will still mate with-androgen receptor mutant males that lack male-typical body coloration.
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雌性丽鱼会攻击并避开缺乏雄性典型体色的雄激素受体突变雄性，但仍会与之交配。
DOI：
10.1101/2023.11.02.565323
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发表时间：
2023
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Alward,Beau
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Howard,MeganR;Ramsaroop,MaxximusG;Hoadley,AndrewP;Jackson,LillianR;Lopez,MarianaS;Saenz,LaurenA;Alward,Beau
动物行为中的一个关键挑战是解开驱动同种行为的社会刺激。对于像鸟鸣这样的行为，可以通过实验分离影响行为的相关线索来获得洞察力。然而，对于一些物种，如硬骨鱼，推定的性信号提示与其他物种有着千丝万缕的联系，这使得分析不同的信号在驱动同种行为中所扮演的确切角色变得困难。在非洲罗非鱼中，雄性占主导地位或从属地位，其中鲜艳的色彩以及领地和求偶行为与等级密切相关。在这里，我们利用雄激素受体(AR)突变体雄性Burtoni缺乏显性-典型的着色但不是行为来分离该物种中雄性着色在驱动雌性交配行为中的作用。我们在独立的行为分析中发现，雌性对AR突变的雄性表现出攻击性，但不会对WT雄性表现出攻击性，但仍与这两种类型的雄性交配。雌性在下丘脑中的esr2b+细胞在与突变型或WT雄性共处时表现出增强的激活，并且这种激活与产卵活动成比例。因此，雄性变色和雌性交配行为之间并不存在简单的关系，这表明独立的感觉机制汇聚在下丘脑esr2b+细胞上，以协调行为输出。
A key challenge in animal behavior is disentangling the social stimuli that drive conspecific behaviors. For behaviors like birdsong, insights can be made through the experimental isolation of relevant cues that affect behavior. However, for some species like teleost fish, putative sexual signaling cues are inextricably linked to others, making it difficult to parse the precise roles distinct signals play in driving conspecific behaviors. In the African cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni, males are dominant or subordinate, wherein bright coloration and territorial and courtship behavior inextricably correlate positively with rank. Here, we leveraged androgen receptor (AR) mutant male A. burtoni that lack dominance-typical coloration but not behavior to isolate the role of male coloration in driving female mating behaviors in this species. We found in independent behavioral assays that females behave aggressively towards AR mutant but not WT males but still mated with both types of males. Females showed enhanced activation of esr2b+ cells in the hypothalamus when housed with either mutant or WT males and this activation scaled with spawning activities. Therefore, there is not a simple relationship between male coloration and female mating behaviors in A. burtoni, suggesting independent sensory mechanisms converge on hypothalamic esr2b+ cells to coordinate behavioral output.