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What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation

‘Animal personalities’ have been shown to exist in many species. Yet, fluctuations in the stability of these inter-individual behavioural differences are not well understood. Against this background, we wondered whether behavioural consistency over time is affected by the reproductive cycle. Female...

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Autores principales: Kästner, Niklas, Richter, S. Helene, Gamer, Matthias, Kaiser, Sylvia, Sachser, Norbert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society Publishing 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28484619
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160998
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author Kästner, Niklas
Richter, S. Helene
Gamer, Matthias
Kaiser, Sylvia
Sachser, Norbert
author_facet Kästner, Niklas
Richter, S. Helene
Gamer, Matthias
Kaiser, Sylvia
Sachser, Norbert
author_sort Kästner, Niklas
collection PubMed
description ‘Animal personalities’ have been shown to exist in many species. Yet, fluctuations in the stability of these inter-individual behavioural differences are not well understood. Against this background, we wondered whether behavioural consistency over time is affected by the reproductive cycle. Female mice were tested twice at an interval of eight weeks in four paradigms assessing social interest as well as anxiety-like behaviour and exploratory locomotion. Twenty-two individuals were tested repeatedly near ovulation, whereas another twenty-two were tested repeatedly in the non-receptive phase. While we found no major behavioural effects at the group level, the reproductive state indeed had profound effects on behavioural stability over time: social interest as well as anxiety-like behaviour proved to be significantly less predictable near ovulation. It is generally believed that phenotypic plasticity is limited due to the costs it brings about. In this context, our data indicate that females accept higher costs in phases directly related to fitness maximization.
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spelling pubmed-54142562017-05-08 What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation Kästner, Niklas Richter, S. Helene Gamer, Matthias Kaiser, Sylvia Sachser, Norbert R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) ‘Animal personalities’ have been shown to exist in many species. Yet, fluctuations in the stability of these inter-individual behavioural differences are not well understood. Against this background, we wondered whether behavioural consistency over time is affected by the reproductive cycle. Female mice were tested twice at an interval of eight weeks in four paradigms assessing social interest as well as anxiety-like behaviour and exploratory locomotion. Twenty-two individuals were tested repeatedly near ovulation, whereas another twenty-two were tested repeatedly in the non-receptive phase. While we found no major behavioural effects at the group level, the reproductive state indeed had profound effects on behavioural stability over time: social interest as well as anxiety-like behaviour proved to be significantly less predictable near ovulation. It is generally believed that phenotypic plasticity is limited due to the costs it brings about. In this context, our data indicate that females accept higher costs in phases directly related to fitness maximization. The Royal Society Publishing 2017-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5414256/ /pubmed/28484619 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160998 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biology (Whole Organism)
Kästner, Niklas
Richter, S. Helene
Gamer, Matthias
Kaiser, Sylvia
Sachser, Norbert
What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title_full What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title_fullStr What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title_full_unstemmed What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title_short What a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
title_sort what a difference a day makes—female behaviour is less predictable near ovulation
topic Biology (Whole Organism)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28484619
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160998
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