Communal nursing in wild house mice is not a by-product of group living: Females choose

Abstract

Communal nursing, the provision of milk to non-offspring, has been argued to be a non-adaptive by-product of group living. We used 2 years of field data from a wild house mouse population to investigate this question. Communal nursing never occurred among females that previously lacked overlap in nest box use. Females nursed communally in only 33 % of cases in which there was a communal nursing partner available from the same social group. Solitarily nursing females were not socially isolated in their group; nevertheless, high spatial associations prior to reproduction predict which potential female partner was chosen for communal nursing. An increase in partner availability increased the probability of communal nursing, but population density itself had a negative effect, which may reflect increased female reproductive competition during summer. These results argue that females are selective in their choice of nursing partners and provide further support that communal nursing with the right partner is adaptive.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00114-013-1130-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Association between exploratory activity and social individuality in genetically identical mice living in the same enriched environment

“…However, it is a very common one in a laboratory setting. Female social behavior in mixed-sex groups is usually described under the aspect of mating competition and nursing behavior (Weidt et al, 2014), while reports on hierarchical structures and aggression focus primarily on male mice (Mackintosh, 1970;Ralls, 1971;Reynolds, 1971;Desjardins et al, 1973;Ga¨rtner, 1994, 1997;Marashi et al, 2003Marashi et al, , 2004Lewejohann et al, 2009a). We are aware of only a single report on hierarchical structures in groups of female laboratory mice by Schuhr (1987).…”

Sex Differences in Animal Models: Focus on Addiction

“…Females are frequently found in groups with pups, but unlike rats in which communal nursing is common, the instance of communal nursing in mice is less than 33% (Weidt et al, 2014). There are both pheromonal and ultrasonic cues to prevent in-breeding, and unlike rats, both male and female mice disperse at puberty (Bronson, 1979;Asaba et al, 2014).…”

A system for automatic recording of social behavior in a free-living wild house mouse population

“…The antenna data already allowed first analyses of basic questions in behavioral ecology such as the evolution of cooperation (ultimate and proximate causes of social behavior and cooperation during communal nursing; [24,33]) or sexual selection [31,32]. It will further contribute to other fields of research, such as population ecology, population genetics and disease ecology, and may be a very useful tool in wildlife and conservation biology.…”

“…It is also possible to study social cooperation and group structure with handheld transponder readers that allow reading of RFID numbers from outside a nest box or another shelter as a tree hole (such a method was used by [24] for house mice, and by [13,14] for Bechstein's bats). This method, however, does not always result in reliable information on all individuals present in a nest box or shelter, especially if many individuals rest or sleep close together and not all RFIDs will be registered [13].…”

“…Two, or more, females pool their litters in a communal nest and indiscriminately care for and nurse own offspring and the pups of the social partner(s) [18][19][20][21][22][23]. One-third of all litters in our study population were raised communally [24].…”