Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2011 Mar;53(2):118-31. doi: 10.1002/dev.20498. Epub 2010 Oct 13.
Family relationships help shape species-typical social and emotional development, but our understanding of how this shaping occurs is still relatively limited. Prairie voles are a socially monogamous and biparental species that is well situated to complement traditional animal models, such as rats and mice, in investigating the effects of family experience. In this series of studies, we aimed to test hypotheses relating to how prairie vole families function under undisturbed, standard laboratory conditions. In the first study, we compared the parental behavior of primiparous biparental (BP) and single-mother (SM) prairie vole family units for 12 postnatal days and then tested for sex differences, behavioral coordination, and family structure effects. Under BP conditions, nest attendance was coordinated and shared equally by both sexes, while pup-directed and partner-directed licking and grooming (LG) were coordinated in a sex and social-context-dependent manner. Contrary to our expectations, SMs showed no evidence of strong parental compensation in response to the lack of the father, indicating a minimal effect of family structure on maternal behavior but a large effect on pup care. In the second study, we examined the effects of these BP and SM rearing conditions on family dynamics in the next generation and found that SM-reared adult parents exhibited lower rates of pup-directed LG in comparison to BP-reared counterparts. Situated in the context of human family dynamics and psychology, these results suggest that the study in prairie voles may help improve our understanding of family systems and how perturbations to these systems can affect adults and offspring.
家庭关系有助于塑造物种典型的社会和情感发展，但我们对这种塑造方式的理解仍然相对有限。草原田鼠是一种社会性一夫一妻制和双亲制的物种，非常适合补充传统的动物模型，如老鼠，以研究家庭经验的影响。在这一系列研究中，我们旨在测试与草原田鼠家庭在不受干扰的标准实验室条件下如何运作的相关假设。在第一项研究中，我们比较了初产的双亲（BP）和单亲（SM）草原田鼠家庭单位的亲代行为 12 天，并测试了性别差异、行为协调和家庭结构的影响。在 BP 条件下，巢的出勤率由两性共同协调和均等分担，而对幼崽的舔舐和梳理（LG）则以性别和社会背景依赖的方式协调。与我们的预期相反，SM 没有表现出强烈的父母补偿行为来应对父亲的缺失，这表明家庭结构对母性行为的影响最小，但对幼崽的照顾影响很大。在第二项研究中，我们研究了这些 BP 和 SM 养育条件对下一代家庭动态的影响，发现与 BP 饲养的对应物相比，SM 饲养的成年父母对幼崽的 LG 率较低。从人类家庭动态和心理学的角度来看，这些结果表明，草原田鼠的研究可能有助于我们更好地理解家庭系统以及这些系统的干扰如何影响成年人和后代。
