TY  - JOUR
AB  - Background: The social environment that mothers experience during pregnancy and lactation has a strong effect
on the developing offspring. Whether offspring can be adaptively shaped to match an environment that is similar
to the maternal one is still a major question in research. Our previous work in wild cavies showed that females
whose mothers lived in a stable social environment with few social challenges during pregnancy and lactation (SEdaughters)
developed different behavioral phenotypes than females whose mothers lived in an unstable social
environment with frequent social challenges during pregnancy and lactation (UE-daughters). In the present study
we investigated whether SE-daughters are better adapted to a stable social environment, similar to their maternal
one, than are UE-daughters, for which the stable social environment represents a mismatch with their maternal
one. For this purpose, we established pairs of one UE- and one SE-daughter and housed them together under
stable social conditions for one week. Dominance ranks, behavioral profiles, glucocorticoid levels, cortisol
responsiveness and body weight changes were compared between the groups. We hypothesized that SEdaughters
fare better in a stable social setting compared to UE-daughters.
Results: After one week of cohabitation in the stable social condition, UE-daughters had higher glucocorticoid
levels, tended to gain less body weight within the first three days and displayed higher frequencies of energydemanding
behaviors such as rearing and digging than SE-daughters. However, there was no difference in cortisol
responsiveness as well as in dominance ranks between UE- and SE-daughters.
Conclusion: Higher glucocorticoid levels and less body weight gain imply that UE-daughters had higher energy
demands than SE-daughters. This high energy demand of UE-daughters is further indicated by the increased
display of rearing and digging behavior. Rearing implies increased vigilance, which is far too energy demanding in a
stable social condition but may confer an advantage in an unstable social environment. Hence, SE-daughters seem
to better match a stable social environment, similar to their maternal one, than do UE-daughters, who encountered
a mismatch to their maternal environment. This data supports the environmental matching hypothesis, stating that
individuals manage the best in environments that correspond to their maternal ones.
DA  - 2018
DO  - 10.1186/s12983-018-0261-1
KW  - Prenatal
KW  - Female offspring
KW  - Adaptation
KW  - Behavioral development
KW  - Environmental matching
KW  - Energy demanding
KW  - Vigilance
KW  - Cortisol
KW  - Stress responsiveness
KW  - Wild cavy
LA  - eng
PY  - 2018
SN  - 1742-9994
T2  - Frontiers in Zoology
TI  - Does the early social environment prepare individuals for the future? A match-mismatch experiment in female wild cavies
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-29192672
Y2  - 2024-11-22T02:09:58
ER  -