the structure and usage of female and male mouse ultrasonic vocalizations reveal only minor differences女性和男性的结构和使用鼠标的超声叫声揭示只有细微的差别.pdfVIP

The Structure and Usage of Female and Male Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations Reveal only Minor Differences 1 2,3 2 1 Kurt Hammerschmidt *, Konstantin Radyushkin , Hannelore Ehrenreich , Julia Fischer ¨ 1 Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Gottingen, Germany, 2 Division of Clinical Neuroscience, Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine, ¨ Gottingen, Germany, 3 Mouse Behavior Outcome Unit, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany Abstract Ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) of mice are increasingly recognized as informative dependent variables in studies using mouse models of human diseases. While pup vocalizations primarily serve to re-establish contact with the mother, adult male ‘‘songs’’ were considered to be courtship signals. Alternatively, mouse USVs may generally function as territorial signals. To distinguish between these two hypotheses, we compared the structure and usage of adult male and female USVs in staged resident-intruder encounters. If calls function primarily as courtship signals, males should respond stronger than females, specifically when presented with a female intruder. Refuting this hypothesis, we found that in response to female intruders, females called more than males (228 632 calls/min vs. 71615 calls/min), and males called more to female than to male intruders (14 67.5 calls/min). There were no significant differences in the acoustic characteristics of the calls given by females and males. To control for the influence of the intruder’s behavior on calling, we repeated the experiments using anaesthetized intruders. Again, females produced more calls to