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Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine

Many animals use chemicals as pheromones to communicate between individuals of the same species, for example to influence mate choice or to assert dominance. Pheromonal communication is an open broadcast system that can be intercepted by unintended receivers such as predators and prey. We have recen...

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Autores principales: Vasudevan, Anand, Vyas, Ajai
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: F1000Research 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4097347/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25075300
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.3890.1
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author Vasudevan, Anand
Vyas, Ajai
author_facet Vasudevan, Anand
Vyas, Ajai
author_sort Vasudevan, Anand
collection PubMed
description Many animals use chemicals as pheromones to communicate between individuals of the same species, for example to influence mate choice or to assert dominance. Pheromonal communication is an open broadcast system that can be intercepted by unintended receivers such as predators and prey. We have recently reported that male rats infected by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii become more attractive to female rats. This suggests a facilitatory effect of infection on rat pheromone production. In view of the open nature of pheromonal communication, we postulate that Toxoplasma gondii infection collateraly enhances kairomonal valence of infected rats to their prey. We compared the strength of kairomonal interception by mice when using scent marks from rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii vs. marks from uninfected control rats. Mice exhibited greater avoidance to both fresh urine and aged rat urine marks obtained from infected animals. These results indicate that, at least in some cases, parasitism can result in opportunity costs for hosts by making prey species more averse to them.
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spelling pubmed-40973472014-07-28 Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine Vasudevan, Anand Vyas, Ajai F1000Res Research Article Many animals use chemicals as pheromones to communicate between individuals of the same species, for example to influence mate choice or to assert dominance. Pheromonal communication is an open broadcast system that can be intercepted by unintended receivers such as predators and prey. We have recently reported that male rats infected by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii become more attractive to female rats. This suggests a facilitatory effect of infection on rat pheromone production. In view of the open nature of pheromonal communication, we postulate that Toxoplasma gondii infection collateraly enhances kairomonal valence of infected rats to their prey. We compared the strength of kairomonal interception by mice when using scent marks from rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii vs. marks from uninfected control rats. Mice exhibited greater avoidance to both fresh urine and aged rat urine marks obtained from infected animals. These results indicate that, at least in some cases, parasitism can result in opportunity costs for hosts by making prey species more averse to them. F1000Research 2014-04-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4097347/ /pubmed/25075300 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.3890.1 Text en Copyright: © 2014 Vasudevan A and Vyas A http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).
spellingShingle Research Article
Vasudevan, Anand
Vyas, Ajai
Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title_full Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title_fullStr Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title_full_unstemmed Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title_short Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
title_sort toxoplasma gondii infection enhances the kairomonal valence of rat urine
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4097347/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25075300
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.3890.1
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