Development of individually distinct recognition cues

Abstract

Despite extensive research on the functions of kin recognition, little is known about ontogenetic changes in the cues mediating such recognition. In Belding's ground squirrels, Spermophilus beldingi, secretions from oral glands are both individually distinct and kin distinct, and function in social recognition across many contexts. Behavioral studies of recognition and kin preferences suggest that these cues may change across development, particularly around the time of weaning and emergence from natal burrows (around 25 days of age). I used an habituationdiscrimination task with captive S. beldingi, presenting subjects with odors collected from a pair of pups at several ages across early development. I found that at 21days of age, but not at 7 or 14, young produce detectable odors. Odors are not individually distinct, however, until 28 days of age, after young have emerged from their burrows and begun foraging. In addition, an individual's odor continues to develop after emergence: odors produced by an individual at 20 and 40 days of age are perceived as dissimilar, yet odors produced at 28 and 40 days are treated as similar. Developmental changes in odors provide a proximate explanation for why S. beldingi littermate preferences are not consolidated until after natal emergence, and demonstrate that conspecifics must update their recognition templates as young develop. ß 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 48: 508-519, 2006.

Olfactory preference for own mother and litter in 1‐day‐old rabbits and its impairment by thermotaxis

“…In Belding ground squirrel (Holmes, 1988(Holmes, , 1990, there is a clear relationship between the emergence of parent-offspring preferences and the time in development when alien conspecifics are encountered for the first time. According to Holmes, the initial expression of preferences will coincide temporally with the need to distinguish familiar from unfamiliar individuals (Mateo, 2006;Sherman, Reeve, & Pfenning, 1997). There is no clear explanation for the differences between the rabbit pup (a lagomorph) and altricial rodents in the establishment of social preferences.…”

“…In Belding's ground squirrel (Spermophilus beldingi), females rear their litter alone in underground burrows for about 25 days after birth and defend their natal burrow against intrusion from conspecifics (Holmes, 1990). Under both field and laboratory conditions, the young distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar dams only at the age when they would emerge above ground for the first time in the field (approximately at 22 days) and litter-mate preferences are not fully developed at that stage either (Holmes, 1997;Mateo, 2006). Similar results have been reported for altricial rats Rattus norvegicus (Leon & Moltz, 1971;Carr, Marasco, & Landauer, 1979), house mice Mus musculus (Breen & Leshner, 1977) and Mongolian gerbils Merius unguiculatus (Gerling & Yahr, 1982), thereby suggesting that the process of recognition develops at a stage when the young have to seek their mother more actively and initiate suckling out of the nest.…”

Parent–offspring facial resemblance increases with age in rhesus macaques

“…This implies that the developmental trajectories of visual cues of identity versus kinship differ in macaques (in contrast to odour cues in rodents, where their ontogeny has been assumed to be similar, e.g. [25]). It is also consistent with reports that the two types of information are encoded separately in human faces, with individuality and kinship being processed using configural versus featural cues, respectively [26].…”

Detective mice assess relatedness in baboons using olfactory cues

“…However, these compounds have been shown to play a crucial role in communication in many species (Belcher et al, 1990;Hurst et al, 1998;Nevison et al, 2003). Another possible approach to investigating olfactory cues is to perform behavioural assays, which can reveal the information perceived by the signal receiver through behavioural, physiological or neural responses under controlled conditions (Drea et al, 2002;Mateo, 2003;Mateo, 2006a;Mateo, 2006b;Nevitt and Bonadonna, 2005). However, although behavioural assays are informative about both the production and the perception of a chemical signal, the experimental settings they require are difficult to implement, particularly in natural populations, because they require extensive manipulations as well as a long phase of conditioned learning for the animals involved.…”