School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Department of Biology, Rollins College, P.O. Box 874601, Winter Park, Florida, 32708, USA.
BMC Biol. 2021 Sep 7;19(1):190. doi: 10.1186/s12915-021-01131-z.
Urbanization is rapidly changing our planet and animals that live in urban environments must quickly adjust their behavior. One of the most prevalent behavioral characteristics of urban dwelling animals is an increased level of risk-taking. Here, we aimed to reveal how urban fruitbats become risk-takers, and how they differ behaviorally from rural bats, studying both genetic and non-genetic factors that might play a role in the process. We assessed the personality of newborn pups from both rural and urban colonies before they acquired experience outdoors, examining risk-taking, exploration, and learning rates.
Urban pups exhibited significantly higher risk-taking levels, they were faster learners, but less exploratory than their rural counterparts. A cross-fostering experiment revealed that pups were more similar to their adoptive mothers, thus suggesting a non-genetic mechanism and pointing towards a maternal effect. We moreover found that lactating urban mothers have higher cortisol levels in their milk, which could potentially explain the transmission of some personality traits from mother to pup.
Young bats seem to acquire environment suitable traits via post-birth non-genetic maternal effects. We offer a potential mechanism for how urban pups can acquire urban-suitable behavioral traits through hormonal transfer from their mothers.
城市化正在迅速改变我们的星球，生活在城市环境中的动物必须迅速调整它们的行为。城市居住动物最普遍的行为特征之一是冒险行为水平的增加。在这里，我们旨在揭示城市果蝠如何成为冒险者，以及它们与农村蝙蝠在行为上的区别，研究可能在这一过程中发挥作用的遗传和非遗传因素。我们评估了来自农村和城市群体的新生幼崽在户外获得经验之前的个性，检查了冒险、探索和学习速度。
城市幼崽表现出明显更高的冒险水平，它们学习速度更快，但探索性不如农村幼崽。交叉寄养实验表明，幼崽与它们的养母更相似，因此表明存在非遗传机制，并指向母体效应。我们还发现，哺乳期的城市母亲的乳汁中皮质醇水平较高，这可能解释了一些个性特征从母亲到幼崽的传递。
年轻的蝙蝠似乎通过出生后的非遗传母体效应获得了适应环境的特征。我们提供了一个潜在的机制，说明城市幼崽如何通过从母亲那里获得荷尔蒙转移来获得适合城市的行为特征。
