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Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species

In colonial breeding species, the number of adverse social interactions during early life typically varies with breeding density. Phenotypic plasticity can help deal with this social context, by allowing offspring to adjust their behaviour. Furthermore, offspring may not be unprepared since mothers...

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Autores principales: Salas, Reyes, Lens, Luc, Stienen, Eric, Verbruggen, Frederick, Müller, Wendt
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9579759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36300141
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220839
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author Salas, Reyes
Lens, Luc
Stienen, Eric
Verbruggen, Frederick
Müller, Wendt
author_facet Salas, Reyes
Lens, Luc
Stienen, Eric
Verbruggen, Frederick
Müller, Wendt
author_sort Salas, Reyes
collection PubMed
description In colonial breeding species, the number of adverse social interactions during early life typically varies with breeding density. Phenotypic plasticity can help deal with this social context, by allowing offspring to adjust their behaviour. Furthermore, offspring may not be unprepared since mothers can allocate resources to their embryos that may pre-adjust them to the post-hatching conditions. Thus, we hypothesize that lesser black-backed gull chicks raised in dense breeding areas, with greater exposure to intra-specific aggression, show higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of exploration compared to chicks in low-density areas, and that this is facilitated by prenatal effects. To test this, we cross-fostered clutches within and across pre-defined high- and low-breeding density areas. We measured chicks' anxiety and exploration activity in an open-field test that included a novel and a familiar object. We found that both pre- and post-natal social environment contributed nearly equally and shaped the offspring's exploratory behaviour, but not its anxiety, in an additive way. Post-natal effects could reflect a learned avoidance of intra-specific aggression, yet identifying the pathways of the prenatal effects will require further study.
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spelling pubmed-95797592022-10-25 Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species Salas, Reyes Lens, Luc Stienen, Eric Verbruggen, Frederick Müller, Wendt R Soc Open Sci Organismal and Evolutionary Biology In colonial breeding species, the number of adverse social interactions during early life typically varies with breeding density. Phenotypic plasticity can help deal with this social context, by allowing offspring to adjust their behaviour. Furthermore, offspring may not be unprepared since mothers can allocate resources to their embryos that may pre-adjust them to the post-hatching conditions. Thus, we hypothesize that lesser black-backed gull chicks raised in dense breeding areas, with greater exposure to intra-specific aggression, show higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of exploration compared to chicks in low-density areas, and that this is facilitated by prenatal effects. To test this, we cross-fostered clutches within and across pre-defined high- and low-breeding density areas. We measured chicks' anxiety and exploration activity in an open-field test that included a novel and a familiar object. We found that both pre- and post-natal social environment contributed nearly equally and shaped the offspring's exploratory behaviour, but not its anxiety, in an additive way. Post-natal effects could reflect a learned avoidance of intra-specific aggression, yet identifying the pathways of the prenatal effects will require further study. The Royal Society 2022-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC9579759/ /pubmed/36300141 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220839 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Organismal and Evolutionary Biology
Salas, Reyes
Lens, Luc
Stienen, Eric
Verbruggen, Frederick
Müller, Wendt
Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title_full Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title_fullStr Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title_full_unstemmed Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title_short Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
title_sort growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species
topic Organismal and Evolutionary Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9579759/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36300141
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220839
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