Quantitative Approach to Analyzing Acoustic Communication Behavior in the House Mouse Pubblico
Oishi, Tatsuya (2010)
Published
Abstract
A key question in audition concerns abilities and mechanisms
underlying how
organisms recognize, detect and discriminate communication
vocalizations. The mouse
has become a useful tool for investigating this, both at the
behavioral and neural levels.
One particular communication context in the mouse has proven
particularly valuable for
this: lost mouse pups call for help to their mother using
ultrasonic vocalizations known as
isolation calls. Upon hearing these, mothers search out and
retrieve the pups. Previous
behavioral research has demonstrated that 1) mothers preferentially
approach sounds with
similar frequency, bandwidth and duration to pup isolation calls,
and 2) mothers show
equal approach between any two sounds that are pup-like in these
acoustic dimensions.
However, whether this truly implies that mothers cannot
discriminate between natural
calls of different pups is the subject of the current work. We
examined whether aspects
of a mother's locomotor behavior may indicate both the detection as
well as
discrimination of pup calls, when those calls are taken from a
conspecific versus a
foreign mouse strain. We tested c57bl/6J-strain mouse mothers in a
two-alternative
choice maze, using automated video tracking of the animal to assess
their behavior,
playing back both c57bl/6J (conspecific) and CBA/CaJ vocalizations;
another group of
mothers presented with silence served as controls for call
detection. Our results suggest
that the amount of time and distance travelled per approach best
indicated the mother's
detection and discrimination abilities. This study provides the
first evidence that mouse
mothers can display behaviors suggestive of discrimination between
two natural types of
isolation calls.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………..…………....1
Methods…………………………………………………………………………...……….6
Results………………………………………………………………………….………...10
Discussion……………………………………………………………………..………....15
Table
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References.………...…………………………………………………………...………...34
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