Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Front Neural Circuits. 2022 Jul 25;16:944895. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2022.944895. eCollection 2022.
In many animal species, males and females exploit different mating strategies, display sex-typical behaviors, and use distinct systems to recognize ethologically relevant cues. Mate selection thus requires mutual recognition across diverse social interactions based on distinct sensory signals. These sex differences in courtship and mating behaviors correspond to differences in sensory systems and downstream neural substrates engaged to recognize and respond to courtship signals. In many rodents, males tend to rely heavily on volatile olfactory and pheromone cues, while females appear to be guided more by a combination of these chemosensory signals with acoustic cues in the form of ultrasonic vocalizations. The mechanisms by which chemical and acoustic cues are integrated to control behavior are understudied in mating but are known to be important in the control of maternal behaviors. Socially monogamous species constitute a behaviorally distinct group of rodents. In these species, anatomic differences between males and females outside the nervous system are less prominent than in species with non-monogamous mating systems, and both sexes engage in more symmetric social behaviors and form attachments. Nevertheless, despite the apparent similarities in behaviors displayed by monogamous males and females, the circuitry supporting social, mating, and attachment behaviors in these species is increasingly thought to differ between the sexes. Sex differences in sensory modalities most important for mate recognition in across species are of particular interest and present a wealth of questions yet to be answered. Here, we discuss how distinct sensory cues may be integrated to drive social and attachment behaviors in rodents, and the differing roles of specific sensory systems in eliciting displays of behavior by females or males.
在许多动物物种中，雄性和雌性会采用不同的交配策略，表现出性别典型的行为，并使用不同的系统来识别与行为相关的线索。因此，配偶选择需要在各种社交互动中进行相互识别，这些互动基于不同的感官信号。这些在求偶和交配行为上的性别差异对应于识别和响应求偶信号的感觉系统和下游神经基质的差异。在许多啮齿动物中，雄性往往严重依赖挥发性嗅觉和信息素线索，而雌性似乎更多地依赖于这些化学感觉信号与超声波发声形式的声音线索的结合。化学和声音线索如何整合来控制行为的机制在交配中研究较少，但已知在控制母性行为方面很重要。社会一夫一妻制物种构成了行为上明显不同的啮齿动物群体。在这些物种中，神经系统以外的雄性和雌性之间的解剖差异不如非一夫一妻制交配系统中的明显，并且两性都表现出更对称的社交行为和依恋行为。然而，尽管一夫一妻制雄性和雌性表现出的行为相似，但支持这些物种的社交、交配和依恋行为的电路被认为在性别之间存在差异。在不同物种中，对配偶识别最重要的感觉模式的性别差异特别有趣，提出了许多尚未回答的问题。在这里，我们讨论了不同的感觉线索如何整合来驱动啮齿动物的社交和依恋行为，以及特定感觉系统在引发雌性或雄性行为表现方面的不同作用。
