Effects of maternal social stability on female reproductive success in wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)

母体社会稳定性对野生家鼠（Mus musculus Domesticus）雌性繁殖成功率的影响

• 批准号: 357504347
• 负责人: Dr. Esther H. D. Carlitz
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Professur für Biopsychologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/357504347?language=en
• 关键词: Effects; maternal; social; stability; female

Offspring development can be shaped by the maternal environment during gestation and the early postnatal period. Numerous laboratory studies on house mice suggest that social instability induces chronic stress, which can have detrimental effects on infants or shape infant development towards adverse environmental conditions. In contrast, fitness benefits for infants have been reported if females established stable social bonds to same-sex partners through increased weaning success and enhanced offspring quality as indicated by higher weight at weaning. At the same time, intra-sexual competition among females results in reproductive skew and reproductive suppression of group living females. Thus, under natural conditions and in a rather complex social environment it is unclear to what extent daughters benefit from a socially stable (high social stability) or suffer from a socially instable environment (low social stability) of their mothers, and whether such effects are modulated by hormones. The current study will test the hypothesis that a mothers social environment has long-lasting effects on her daughters´ reproductive success in a free-living population of house mice that undergoes seasonal variation in reproductive competition. We will use access to a population of wild house mice that has been carefully studied over the past 14 years. Behavioral data obtained by social network monitoring of the free-living individual house mice will be combined with life history data as well as with long-term steroid hormone profiles obtained by analyzing the hormones incorporated in the animals´ hair. We will use this data set to test three main hypotheses: (I) Maternal social stability during gestation and nursing positively correlates with the lifetime reproductive success of daughters; (II) social instability is a chronically stressful situation for a mother that can influence her daughter´s reproduction success mediated by alterations in steroid hormone output; (III) provided that maternal social instability is associated with elevated glucocorticoid hormone production (stress hormones), we predict modulating effects on their daughters´ physiological hormone profile.

后代的发育可以由母体在妊娠期和出生后早期的环境塑造。对家鼠的大量实验室研究表明，社会不稳定会引起慢性压力，这可能对婴儿产生有害影响，或使婴儿在不利的环境条件下发育。与此相反，健康的好处，婴儿已报告，如果女性建立稳定的社会纽带，同性伴侣通过增加断奶成功率和提高后代的质量，表明在断奶时更高的重量。同时，雌性个体间的性内竞争导致了群体生活雌性个体的生殖偏斜和生殖抑制。因此，在自然条件下和相当复杂的社会环境中，女儿在多大程度上受益于母亲的社会稳定（社会稳定性高）或遭受母亲的社会不稳定环境（社会稳定性低），以及这种影响是否受到激素的调节，都是不清楚的。目前的研究将检验一个假设，即母亲的社会环境对她女儿的生殖成功有长期的影响，在一个自由生活的家鼠种群中，家鼠种群在生殖竞争中经历了季节性变化。我们将使用在过去14年中经过仔细研究的野生家鼠种群。通过对自由生活的个体家鼠进行社交网络监测获得的行为数据将与生活史数据以及通过分析动物毛发中的激素获得的长期类固醇激素谱相结合。我们将使用这些数据集来检验三个主要假设：（I）妊娠和哺乳期间母亲的社会稳定性与女儿的终生生殖成功呈正相关;（II）社会不稳定是母亲的长期压力状况，可以通过类固醇激素分泌的改变来影响女儿的生殖成功;（III）如果母亲的社会不稳定与糖皮质激素（应激激素）的产生有关，我们预测对女儿生理激素谱的调节作用。