Department of Biology, Reed College, USA.
Horm Behav. 2012 Apr;61(4):496-503. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.01.006. Epub 2012 Jan 18.
Social environment can affect the expression of sex-typical behavior in both males and females. Males of the African cichlid species Astatotilapia burtoni have long served as a model system to study the neural, endocrine, and molecular basis of socially plastic dominance behavior. Here we show that in all-female communities of A. burtoni, some individuals acquire a male-typical dominance phenotype, including aggressive territorial defense, distinctive color patterns, and courtship behavior. Furthermore, dominant females have higher levels of circulating androgens than either subordinate females or females in mixed-sex communities. These male-typical traits do not involve sex change, nor do the social phenotypes in all-female communities differ in relative ovarian size, suggesting that factors other than gonadal physiology underlie much of the observed variation. In contrast to the well-studied situation in males, dominant and subordinate females do not differ in the rate of somatic growth. Dominant females are not any more likely than subordinates to spawn with an introduced male, although they do so sooner. These results extend the well known extraordinary behavioral plasticity of A. burtoni to the females of this species and provide a foundation for uncovering the neural and molecular basis of social dominance behavior while controlling for factors such as sex, gonadal state and growth.
社会环境会影响雄性和雌性的典型性行为表达。非洲丽鱼科的 Astatotilapia burtoni 雄鱼一直是研究社会可塑性支配行为的神经、内分泌和分子基础的模型系统。在这里，我们发现，在 A. burtoni 的全雌群体中，一些个体获得了典型的雄性支配表型，包括攻击性的领地防御、独特的颜色模式和求偶行为。此外，支配型雌鱼的循环雄激素水平高于从属雌鱼或混合性别群体中的雌鱼。这些典型的雄性特征不涉及性别转换，全雌群体中的社会表型在相对卵巢大小上也没有差异，这表明，除了性腺生理学之外，还有其他因素是导致观察到的大部分变异的基础。与在雄性中研究得很好的情况相反，支配型和从属型雌鱼在体生长率上没有差异。支配型雌鱼与引入的雄鱼交配的可能性并不比从属型雌鱼高，尽管它们更早地这样做。这些结果将 A. burtoni 的著名的非凡行为可塑性扩展到该物种的雌性，并为揭示社会支配行为的神经和分子基础提供了基础，同时控制了性别、性腺状态和生长等因素。
