Male pheromones and their reception by females are co-adapted to affect mating success in two subspecies of brown rats

• 作者: Yao-Hua ZHANG Lei ZHAO Shi-Hui Fu Zhen-Shan WANG Jian-Xu ZHANG
• 来源期刊: 动物学报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（4）
• 所属期刊栏目: Articles
• 页码范围: 371-382
• 页数: 12页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/cz/zoaa066

摘要

Pheromonal communication plays a key role in the sociosexual behavior of rodents.The coadapta-tion between pheromones and chemosensory systems has been well illustrated in insects but poorly investigated in rodents and other mammals.We aimed to investigate whether coadaptation between male pheromones and female reception might have occurred in brown rats Rattus norve-gicus.We recently reported that major urinary protein (MUP) pheromones are associated with male mating success in a brown rat subspecies,R.n.humiliatus (Rnh).Here,we discovered that MUPs were less polymorphic and occurred at much lower concentrations in males of a parapatric subspecies,R.n.caraco (Rnc),than in Rnh males,and found no association between pheromones and paternity success.Moreover,the observation of Rnc males that experienced chronic dyadic encounters and established dominance-submission relationships revealed that the dominant males achieved greater mating success than the subordinate males,but their MUP levels did not differ by social status.These findings suggest that male mating success in Rnc rats is related to so-cial rank rather than to pheromone levels and that low concentration of MUPs might not be a reli-able signal for mate choice in Rnc rats,which is different from the findings obtained in Rnh rats.In addition,compared with Rnh females,Rnc females exhibited reduced expression of pheromone re-ceptor genes,and a lower number of vomeronasal receptor neurons were activated by MUP phero-mones,which imply that the female chemosensory reception of pheromones might be structurally and functionally coadapted with male pheromone signals in brown rats.