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Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys)
Subterranean common mole-rats of the genus Fukomys (family Bathyergidae) live in large, cooperatively-breeding families. Odor cues have been hypothesized to play an important role in mediating social behaviors in the underground ecotope, but only little is known about the role of olfactory signaling...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792591/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36572727 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26351-3 |
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author | Caspar, Kai R. Stopka, Pavel Issel, Daniel Katschak, Kristin H. Zöllner, Till Zupanc, Sina Žáček, Petr Begall, Sabine |
author_facet | Caspar, Kai R. Stopka, Pavel Issel, Daniel Katschak, Kristin H. Zöllner, Till Zupanc, Sina Žáček, Petr Begall, Sabine |
author_sort | Caspar, Kai R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Subterranean common mole-rats of the genus Fukomys (family Bathyergidae) live in large, cooperatively-breeding families. Odor cues have been hypothesized to play an important role in mediating social behaviors in the underground ecotope, but only little is known about the role of olfactory signaling in burrowing mammals. Here we characterize the so far neglected perioral glands of Fukomys and other African mole-rats as an important source of olfactory social information. Histology demonstrates these structures to be derived sebaceous glands that are developed regardless of sex and reproductive status. However, gland activity is higher in Fukomys males, leading to sexually dimorphic patterns of stain and clotting of the facial pelage. Behavioral assays revealed that conspecifics prefer male but not female perioral swabs over scent samples from the back fur and that male sebum causes similar attraction as anogenital scent, a known source of social information in Fukomys. Finally, we assessed volatile compounds in the perioral sebum of the giant mole-rat (Fukomys mechowii) via GCxGC-MS-based metabolomic profiling. Volatiles display pronounced sex-specific signatures but also allow to differentiate between intrasexual reproductive status groups. These different lines of evidence suggest that mole-rat perioral glands provide complex odor signals which play a crucial role in social communication. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9792591 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97925912022-12-28 Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) Caspar, Kai R. Stopka, Pavel Issel, Daniel Katschak, Kristin H. Zöllner, Till Zupanc, Sina Žáček, Petr Begall, Sabine Sci Rep Article Subterranean common mole-rats of the genus Fukomys (family Bathyergidae) live in large, cooperatively-breeding families. Odor cues have been hypothesized to play an important role in mediating social behaviors in the underground ecotope, but only little is known about the role of olfactory signaling in burrowing mammals. Here we characterize the so far neglected perioral glands of Fukomys and other African mole-rats as an important source of olfactory social information. Histology demonstrates these structures to be derived sebaceous glands that are developed regardless of sex and reproductive status. However, gland activity is higher in Fukomys males, leading to sexually dimorphic patterns of stain and clotting of the facial pelage. Behavioral assays revealed that conspecifics prefer male but not female perioral swabs over scent samples from the back fur and that male sebum causes similar attraction as anogenital scent, a known source of social information in Fukomys. Finally, we assessed volatile compounds in the perioral sebum of the giant mole-rat (Fukomys mechowii) via GCxGC-MS-based metabolomic profiling. Volatiles display pronounced sex-specific signatures but also allow to differentiate between intrasexual reproductive status groups. These different lines of evidence suggest that mole-rat perioral glands provide complex odor signals which play a crucial role in social communication. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-12-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9792591/ /pubmed/36572727 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26351-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Caspar, Kai R. Stopka, Pavel Issel, Daniel Katschak, Kristin H. Zöllner, Till Zupanc, Sina Žáček, Petr Begall, Sabine Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title | Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title_full | Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title_fullStr | Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title_full_unstemmed | Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title_short | Perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in African mole-rats (genus Fukomys) |
title_sort | perioral secretions enable complex social signaling in african mole-rats (genus fukomys) |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792591/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36572727 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26351-3 |
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