The social modulation of behaviour, cognition and stress reactivity during pregnancy and lactation

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In mammals a very important phase, in which environmental factors can shape brain development, physiology, and behaviour is the prenatal phase. The social environment during pregnancy can be crucial for the development of the offspring. For example, social instability during pregnancy generally brings about a behavioural and neuroendocrine masculinization in daughters and a less pronounced expression of male-typical traits in sons. Furthermore, impaired cognitive abilities and changed emotional behaviour and stress reactivity due to prenatal factors are described. The changed behavioural traits, emotional behaviour, and cognitive abilities due to prenatal social factors are often regarded as deviation from the norm or even as pathological. Nonetheless, the variation in behavioural phenotype brought about by prenatal factors can represent an adaptation to the prevailing and/or future environmental situation. However, empirical data to answer these questions are sparse. We could demonstrate in wild cavies that offspring of mothers, who had lived in a stable or an unstable social environment during pregnancy and lactation, developed different behavioural profiles. Thus, the aim of this project is to investigate in wild cavies the adaptive significance of these different behavioural traits. For this purpose we will mimic in enclosures situations, which are known to occur in nature, and in which these specific behavioural strategies should have advantages: We will investigate in match-mismatch-experiments, whether in situation A the behavioural strategy A (a strategy, which will be developed by offspring, whose mothers had lived in a similar situation during pregnancy and lactation) will have advantages over strategy B (a strategy, which will be developed by offspring, whose mothers had lived in a different situation B during pregnancy and lactation), and vice versa. Additionally, we will investigate whether these different behavioural traits are correlated with different emotional behaviour, cognitive abilities and stress reactivity. From this project we expect completely new insights into the adaptiveness of behavioural strategies and their correlation with emotionality and cognitive abilities shaped by different social environments during early phases of life.