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Stability and potential inheritance of infanticidal behavior in prairie voles
Author(s) -
Olazábal Daniel E.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.20478
Subject(s) - offspring , context (archaeology) , developmental psychology , trait , psychology , inheritance (genetic algorithm) , pregnancy , biology , genetics , paleontology , computer science , gene , programming language
Abstract Naïve female prairie voles show significant variability in their behavioral response to newborns. We investigated whether that behavioral response (a) was related to the quality of postpartum maternal behavior; (b) was affected by postpartum maternal experience; and (c) could be selectively bred. The behavior of females was recorded in three conditions: as naïve in a nonreproductive context, as single lactating (no male present), and as experienced mother in a nonreproductive context. Finally, females and males with similar behavioral response to newborns were selectively bred for three generation. Males were removed before the offspring was born. Our results revealed that (a) naïve females that attacked pups, spent more time distant from them after parturition than those that were maternal or ignored the pups ( p < .05); (b) postpartum maternal experience did not reverse infanticidal behavior; and (c) at the third generation of selective breeding, 90% of the offspring of females that were nonmaternal as virgins, behaved as their mothers. These findings suggest that the infanticidal behavioral response is a stable behavioral trait and might be passed to the offspring. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 52: 825–832, 2010.