Energy Reallocation to Breeding Performance through Improved Nest Building in Laboratory Mice

Gaskill, Brianna N.; Pritchett-Corning, Kathleen R.; Gordon, Christopher J.; Pajor, E. A.; Lucas, Jeffrey R.; Davis, J. K.; Garner, Joseph P.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074153

Cited by 46 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…However, a recent study found that supplying breeding cages with nesting material (8 g of either Enviro-dri or Nestlets) significantly improved breeding performance in C57BL/6 (B6), BALB/c, and CD-1 mice. 14 Tests of mouse bedding preference vary somewhat due to the specific bedding materials used in the studies. Both B6 and BALB/cBYJ mice preferred larger particles and ones that could be manipulated, 15 and female B6 mice preferred shaving to chip bedding.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Aspen shaving versus chip bedding: effects on breeding and behavior

et al. 2014

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The choice of laboratory cage bedding material is often based on both practical and husbandry issues, whereas behavioral outcomes rarely appear to be considered. It has been noted that a breeding success difference appears to be associated with the differential use of aspen chip and aspen shaving bedding in our facility; therefore, we sought to analyze breeding records maintained over a 20-month period. In fact, in all four mouse strains analyzed, shaving bedding was associated with a significant increase in average weanlings per litter relative to chip bedding. To determine whether these bedding types also resulted in differences in behaviors associated with wellbeing, we examined nest building, anxiety-like, depressive-like (or helpless-like), and social behavior in mice housed on chip versus shaving bedding. We found differences in the nests built, but no overall effect of bedding type on the other behaviors examined. Therefore, we argue that breeding success, perhaps especially in more challenging strains, is improved on shaving bedding and this is likely due to improved nest-building potential. For standard laboratory practices, however, these bedding types appear equivalent.

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confidence: 99%

Aspen shaving versus chip bedding: effects on breeding and behavior

et al. 2014

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“…A recurrent theme of this paper, and this special issue, is that the role that good animal wellbeing plays in good science also cannot be ignored 26,[41][42][43][56][57][58] . Furthermore, factors that are controlled or standardized have also been widely shown to affect both the model and scientific outcomes, from the infectious agents we choose to exclude 59 , to the choice of bedding materials [60][61][62] and enrichment [63][64][65] , to cage changing practices 66 , to handling technique 58 , to the identity 31 or sex 67 of the experimenter. In some of these examples, animal health, animal well-being, and scientific quality are clearly improved by implementing a standard such as excluding pathogens that kill animals 68 , or adding nesting enrichment 64,65 ; in others they are clearly impaired, as when animals are subjected to "forced" handling techniques 58 , or by the over-exclusion of infectious agents 59 .…”

Section: Six Questions: What Do We Choose To Ignore?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing Therioepistemology: the study of how knowledge is gained from animal research

et al. 2017

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We are honored to write the opening article of this focus issue of Lab Animal. This focus issue could not occur at a more important time for biomedical research and the use of animals in science in general. The progressive worsening of success rates in human trials (currently 1 in 9 drugs entering human trials will succeed) 1-4 , combined with the explosion of interest in the reproducibility crisis 5-8 and the recognition that most drugs fail in human trials due to insufficient efficacy 1,2,4 , has led to a growing suspicion that the failure of translation from animal work to human outcomes may in some way reflect issues in animal research itself 5-19 -after all, every drug that fails in humans "worked" in an animal model. Indeed pharmaceutical companies continue to disinvest in internal animal R&D, a trend begun in the last decade, passing on the cost and risk to academia and startups 5,20 . Even this approach is not foolproof as pharmaceutical companies often cannot replicate the results of published work from academia 5,8,13 . Accordingly, there is a growing trend to focus on human, not animal, work for basic discovery 17 .Discarding animal research entirely is not the answer. When properly used, animal models have incredible value, not least the ability to follow biomarkers from birth to disease onset in a year or less (in the case of mice), which is impossible in humans 17,18 . There are patterns and principles that can help us identify models and results that are more or less likely to translate, and there are also easily realized, simple changes in the execution of animal work that will inherently improve translation [16][17][18] . This isn't a new concept; looking back over the last 10-15 years we can see many authors have been candid about the merits, strengths, weaknesses, reproducibility, and translatability of various animal models 1,2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] . Our goal with this article is to unite the common themes in this broader emerging literature and this special issue.Thus, the central point is that we (i.e., refs. 17,18,26-28,39,41) do not represent a voice in the wilderness, but one voice in a chorus and that this emerging literature 1,2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]42,43 reflects a nascent discipline which can be codified as the study of how knowledge is gained from animal research. We propose the title "Therioepistemology" This focus issue of Lab Animal coincides with a tipping point in biomedical research. For the first time, the scale of the reproducibility and translatability crisis is widely understood beyond the small cadre of researchers who have been studying it and the pharmaceutical and biotech companies who have been living it. Here we argue that an emerging literature, including the papers in this focus issue, has begun to congeal around a set of recurring themes, which themselves represent a paradigm shift. This paradigm shift can be c...

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“…Housing mice at, or just below, standard housing temperatures has been shown to decrease reproduction 8,9 , growth 10,11 , organ weight 10 , immune function 10 and increase metabolic rate [12][13][14] . Increasing laboratory ambient temperatures is not a solution because mice prefer different temperatures for different behaviors, times of day and between genders [15][16][17][18] .…”

Section: Temperature As An Example Of Environmental Stressmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This reduction in heat loss, and subsequent reduction in metabolism, results in substantial energetic savings. Nest building provides better insulation and reduces heat loss to the environment 11 , resulting in improved food conversion 11,57 , better reproductive performance 8,9 and increased pup survival 8 . Although we and colleagues have shown that 8 g of nesting material is effective at reducing thermal stress in groups of three mice in static cages with aspen bedding, it is unknown how much material is needed for different group sizes, in ventilated versus static caging, or with different types of bedding material.…”

Section: Thermal Stress and Its Effect On Mouse Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stressed out: providing laboratory animals with behavioral control to reduce the physiological effects of stress

Gaskill

Garner

2017

Lab Anim

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Hans Selye would have made a horrible laboratory animal technician. This budding young 1930s scientist accidently discovered stress physiology and the negative effect chronic exposure has on the body because of his extremely poor rat handling skills 1 . As a result, we know for a fact that husbandry affects the quality of animal models. Despite this knowledge, most labs continue to ignore stressful experiences in rodent models, often because of time or financial costs. Today's researchers and animal technicians of course receive more training and animal welfare oversight than Dr. Selye, but the slow rate of progress in minimizing general stress in the laboratory is disheartening. In addition to the obvious animal welfare ramifications of this lack of advancement, animal models in general show poor predictive validity in terms of translational outcomes in human clinical trials. Roughly 90% of compounds (for example, drugs or other therapeutics) that are 'successful' in animal trials fail in FDA human trials; the majority of these failures are a result of a lack of efficacy 2 . There are certainly many variables that contribute to this failure to translate, including reliance on measures that lack biological or psychological homology, translation of human clinical measures, or simple environmental effects 3 . In addition, we widely assume that strain differences and genetics are a large, if not the largest, influence on mouse behavior. However, in a retrospective study of influences on thermal nociception, strain only accounted for 27% of data variability 4 . On the other hand, environmental factors alone accounted for as much as 42% of data variability in the same study, and the identity of the experimenter actually had more effect on behavior than the genetics of the animal. Other examples highlight even more marked ratios, with enormous effects on experimental power and false discovery rates if not properly accounted for in data analysis 3,5 . Yet there is a substantial lack of research and funding available to determine how the laboratory environment affects animal physiology and behavior, particularly as it relates to characteristics of the human disease being modeled.Temperature as an example of environmental stress Many aspects of the laboratory environment are stressful to rodents and do not accurately reflect human physiology. An animal's environment can include both physiological and social stressors that require an animal to adapt to maintain allostatic balance. Thermal stress, for example, is a known stressor in the laboratory that affects temperature regulation and metabolism and results in poor modeling of human conditions in mouse models. Laboratory mice experience some degree of thermal stress under all recommended housing temperatures 6,7 (typically between 20-26 °C), but are prevented from adequately using many of their behavioral adaptations for thermoregulation and must therefore rely on thermogenic processes. At 23 °C, a mouse's metabolic rate is 60% higher than its metabolic rate at thermoneu...

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Energy Reallocation to Breeding Performance through Improved Nest Building in Laboratory Mice

Cited by 46 publications

References 30 publications

Aspen shaving versus chip bedding: effects on breeding and behavior

Aspen shaving versus chip bedding: effects on breeding and behavior

Introducing Therioepistemology: the study of how knowledge is gained from animal research

Stressed out: providing laboratory animals with behavioral control to reduce the physiological effects of stress

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