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Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size

BACKGROUND: In parent-offspring communication, vocal signals are often used to attract attention and offspring might call to induce parental behaviour. In guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) mothers wean larger litters later than small ones, but it is unknown whether this difference depends on p...

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Autores principales: Kober, Melanie, Trillmich, Fritz, Naguib, Marc
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2546386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18783602
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-5-13
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author Kober, Melanie
Trillmich, Fritz
Naguib, Marc
author_facet Kober, Melanie
Trillmich, Fritz
Naguib, Marc
author_sort Kober, Melanie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In parent-offspring communication, vocal signals are often used to attract attention and offspring might call to induce parental behaviour. In guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) mothers wean larger litters later than small ones, but it is unknown whether this difference depends on processes induced during pregnancy or is influenced post-natally by the number of pups present. We here tested with playback-experiments using pup separation calls whether mothers with cross-fostered large experimental litters (four-pup-litters) were more responsive to offspring calls and maintained responsiveness for longer than mothers with small experimental litters (two-pup-litters). Mothers were tested when two pups were suckling i.e. when both teats were occupied. RESULTS: Mothers of four-pup litters responded stronger to broadcast pup separation calls than those with two-pup litters. Additionally, we tested the mothers' responsiveness to pup separation calls in the absence of their pups on day 8 and 20 of lactation. Mothers of four-pup litters responded stronger and showed no decrease in responsiveness from day 8 to 20, whereas mothers of two-pup litters responded less and decreased responsiveness from day 8 to 20. Mothers of four-pup litters also weaned their pups 5 days later than those of two-pup litters. CONCLUSION: Measured by their response to pup calls and by time to weaning, guinea pig mothers adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size. This behaviour is likely to be an adaptive strategy in resource allocation during reproduction.
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spelling pubmed-25463862008-09-20 Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size Kober, Melanie Trillmich, Fritz Naguib, Marc Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: In parent-offspring communication, vocal signals are often used to attract attention and offspring might call to induce parental behaviour. In guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) mothers wean larger litters later than small ones, but it is unknown whether this difference depends on processes induced during pregnancy or is influenced post-natally by the number of pups present. We here tested with playback-experiments using pup separation calls whether mothers with cross-fostered large experimental litters (four-pup-litters) were more responsive to offspring calls and maintained responsiveness for longer than mothers with small experimental litters (two-pup-litters). Mothers were tested when two pups were suckling i.e. when both teats were occupied. RESULTS: Mothers of four-pup litters responded stronger to broadcast pup separation calls than those with two-pup litters. Additionally, we tested the mothers' responsiveness to pup separation calls in the absence of their pups on day 8 and 20 of lactation. Mothers of four-pup litters responded stronger and showed no decrease in responsiveness from day 8 to 20, whereas mothers of two-pup litters responded less and decreased responsiveness from day 8 to 20. Mothers of four-pup litters also weaned their pups 5 days later than those of two-pup litters. CONCLUSION: Measured by their response to pup calls and by time to weaning, guinea pig mothers adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size. This behaviour is likely to be an adaptive strategy in resource allocation during reproduction. BioMed Central 2008-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC2546386/ /pubmed/18783602 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-5-13 Text en Copyright © 2008 Kober et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Kober, Melanie
Trillmich, Fritz
Naguib, Marc
Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title_full Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title_fullStr Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title_full_unstemmed Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title_short Vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
title_sort vocal mother-offspring communication in guinea pigs: females adjust maternal responsiveness to litter size
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2546386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18783602
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-5-13
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