Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Tokat Gaziosmanpasa University, Tokat, 60250, Turkey.
Physiol Behav. 2022 Oct 15;255:113920. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2022.113920. Epub 2022 Jul 19.
Predation is a psychological stressor in prey animals. Besides direct killing and consumption by predators, the perception of predation risk indirectly influence prey population behavior, dynamics and physiology. Few studies identified the transcriptomic response associated with predator presence/abundance in natural populations and uncontrolled settings. However, to our knowledge, intersexual differences in the number of genes whose expression change in response to high predation risk have not been previously reported in wild mammals. Here, by using publicly available gene expression data in wild yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer), we found that the number of differentially expressed genes in response to predator stress is higher in female marmots (n = 516) than males (n = 387). Only a small percentage of these differentially expressed genes (n = 36) are shared between the sexes, and that the most of the differentially expressed genes are expressed in a sex-specific manner in response to predation stress. Overall, our results provide new insight into sex-specific variation in gene expression changes in wild mammals under high predation risk.
捕食是猎物动物的一种心理应激源。除了被捕食者直接捕杀和消耗之外，捕食风险的感知也会间接影响猎物种群的行为、动态和生理。很少有研究确定与自然种群和非受控环境中捕食者存在/丰度相关的转录组反应。然而，据我们所知，在野生哺乳动物中，雌雄两性中因高捕食风险而改变表达的基因数量的性别差异尚未被报道过。在这里，我们通过使用野生黄腹旱獭（Marmota flaviventer）中公开的基因表达数据发现，对捕食者压力作出反应的差异表达基因数量在雌性旱獭（n=516）中高于雄性旱獭（n=387）。这些差异表达基因中只有一小部分（n=36）在两性之间共享，而且大多数差异表达基因以性别特异性的方式对捕食压力作出反应。总的来说，我们的研究结果为在高捕食风险下野生哺乳动物的基因表达变化中的性别特异性差异提供了新的见解。
