Catalogue of the behaviour of Meriones unguiculatus f. dom. (Mongolian gerbil) and wild conspecies, in captivity and under natural conditions, based on a systematic literature review

Hurtado-Parrado, Camilo; González, Carmen; Moreno, Leyda M.; González, Camilo A.; Arias, Mónica; Beltrán, Lorena; Cardona, Santiago

doi:10.1007/s10164-015-0421-0

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…1) were cagemates with their demonstrators. Sharing a home-cage could potentially give rise to exchange of odors and food 41 . In addition, gerbils communicate through vocalizations 42 , which may in part enhance learning during the exposure sessions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our findings are also consistent with the environmental demands of rodents with underground burrows or nocturnal foraging behaviors, sea mammals living at depths with little light, and humans who lack visual experience. Like other rodents, gerbils have an elaborate repertoire of social behaviors 41 , including mutual grooming, vocal communication in both audible and ultrasonic ranges, dominance and appeasement poses, sexual behavior and pup-rearing. Since gerbils live in long underground burrows, and are particularly active at dawn or dusk 26 – 28 , the ability to use redundant sensory cues for social learning may be present in such species for which critical behaviors takes place under poor visibility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues

Paraouty

Charbonneau

Sanes

2020

Sci Rep

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to learn in a social context. One plausible hypothesis that explains our results is that naïve gerbils can learn about the spatial behavior of demonstrators, either through visual or auditory signals, and can subsequently deploy this information when exploring and training on the auditory discrimination task. Thus, social learning is flexible and may, in part, explain its ubiquitous presence and function in many species across an array of environments. Methods Experimental animals. Gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus, n = 118) pups were weaned at postnatal day (P) 30 from commercial breeding pairs (Charles River). Littermates were caged together, but separated by sex, and maintained in a 12 h light/dark cycle. Same-sex litters were split into 2 subsets: 1. experimenter-trained demonstrator gerbils, and 2. naïve gerbils for exposure and practice. Each naïve animal was used for one single experimental or control paradigm. Data for each experimental or control paradigm was collected from at least 3 different litters in order to avoid any biases. Finally, animals in a given litter were used for at least 2 paradigms. All procedures related to the maintenance and use of animals were approved by the University Animal Welfare Committee at New York University, and all experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues

Paraouty

Charbonneau

Sanes

2020

Sci Rep

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“…The Mongolian gerbil has become a popular animal model used in research areas from gastric and neurological disease to animal cognition (for a review see Hurtado-Parrado et al, 2015). In contrast to rats and mice, gerbils are monogamous and diurnal/crepuscular species (Romero-Morales et al, 2018; Hurtado-Parrado et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diazepam Reduces Escape and Increases Closed-Arms Exploration in Gerbils After 5 min in the Elevated Plus-Maze

et al. 2019

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Despite the wide implementation of the elevated plus-maze (EPM) test to assess anxiety-related behaviors in rodents, the interpretation of these measures in gerbils has received limited attention. Here, male gerbils were treated with vehicle or diazepam, followed by a 20-min EPM session. EPM data were subjected to minute-by-minute, 5-min bins and factor analyses. During the first 5-min, gerbils avoided the closed arms in favor of the open arms and diazepam increased open-arms entries; furthermore, a single factor (escape behavior) explained all the analyzed measures. Only after 5-min, gerbils reduced open-arms exploration and three independent factors emerged for each subsequent 5-min bin. These findings suggest that EPM data from gerbils should be analyzed in at least two 5-min bins. Measures from the standard 5-min session seem to be related to an escape response from the EPM through the open arms. Once habituated, measures from the second 5-min bin seem to be related to a conflictive situation: keep trying to escape unsuccessfully (due to open-arms height) or seek protection in the closed arms (unsafe places). Diazepam seems to reduce this conflict by mitigating the escape response (Factor 1 – Anxiety) and increasing closed-arms approach (Factor 2) and risk assessment (Factor 3). Unlike mice and rats, a decrease in open-arms exploration and an increase in risk assessment could be interpreted as an anxiolytic-like effect in gerbils.

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“…In addition, the following behaviors were scored using the same protocol: (a) average time of each visit to the platform (in seconds), (b) percentage of session time allocated to rearing in the grid floor, (c) rate of digging on the grid floor (per minute), (d) rate of jumping on the grid floor (per minute) and (e) rate of probing from the platform (per minute). Appendix S4 presents the detailed definitions of these behaviors, which were based on Hurtado-Parrado et al (2015) .…”

Section: Experiments 2: Effects Of Response-independent Foot Shocksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The decision to compare these two foot-shock intensities (0.5 vs. 1.0 mA) resulted from consideration of the following features: (a) Ballard, Sänger & Higgins (2001) used an analogous system to the VFC and could only reproduce defensive reactions in gerbils (flinch, vocalize, and jump— Hurtado-Parrado et al, 2015 ) when the intensity of the shocks was equal to or greater than 1.0 mA; (b) preliminary studies conducted in our laboratory entailing 1.0 mA shocks resulted in reliable reproduction not only of the same defensive responses reported by Ballard, Sänger & Higgins (2001) but also other responses such as running, thigmotaxis, and 360° jumps; and (c) approval of the step-down protocol by our Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) required the explicit effort to test a refined version of the proposed experimental procedure so the stress and pain of the animals could be reduced without compromising the experimental findings; in this case, reliably reproducing avoidance phenomena in gerbils.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Mongolian gerbil emotional behavior: effects of two shock intensities and response-independent shocks during an extended inhibitory-avoidance task

Hurtado-Parrado

González-León

Arias-Higuera

et al. 2017

PeerJ

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Despite step-down inhibitory avoidance procedures that have been widely implemented in rats and mice to study learning and emotion phenomena, performance of other species in these tasks has received less attention. The case of the Mongolian gerbil is of relevance considering the discrepancies in the parameters of the step-down protocols implemented, especially the wide range of foot-shock intensities (i.e., 0.4–4.0 mA), and the lack of information on long-term performance, extinction effects, and behavioral patterning during these tasks. Experiment 1 aimed to (a) characterize gerbils’ acquisition, extinction, and steady-state performance during a multisession (i.e., extended) step-down protocol adapted for implementation in a commercially-available behavioral package (Video Fear Conditioning System—MED Associates Fairfax, VT, USA), and (b) compare gerbils’ performance in this task with two shock intensities – 0.5 vs. 1.0 mA—considered in the low-to-mid range. Results indicated that the 1.0 mA protocol produced more reliable and clear evidence of avoidance learning, extinction, and reacquisition in terms of increments in freezing and on-platform time as well as suppression of platform descent. Experiment 2 aimed to (a) assess whether an alternate protocol consisting of a random delivery of foot shocks could replicate the effects of Experiment 1 and (b) characterize gerbils’ exploratory behavior during the step-down task (jumping, digging, rearing, and probing). Random shocks did not reproduce the effects observed with the first protocol. The data also indicated that a change from random to response-dependent shocks affects (a) the length of each visit to the platform, but not the frequency of platform descends or freezing time, and (b) the patterns of exploratory behavior, namely, suppression of digging and rearing, as well as increments in probing and jumping. Overall, the study demonstrated the feasibility of the extended step-down protocol for studying steady performance, extinction, and reacquisition of avoidance behavior in gerbils, which could be easily implemented in a commercially available system. The observation that 1.0 mA shocks produced a clear and consistent avoidance behavior suggests that implementation of higher intensities is unnecessary for reproducing aversive-conditioning effects in this species. The observed patterning of freezing, platform descents, and exploratory responses produced by the change from random to periodic shocks may relate to the active defensive system of the gerbil. Of special interest is the probing behavior, which could be interpreted as risk assessment and has not been reported in other rodent species exposed to step-down and similar tasks.

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Catalogue of the behaviour of Meriones unguiculatus f. dom. (Mongolian gerbil) and wild conspecies, in captivity and under natural conditions, based on a systematic literature review

Cited by 14 publications

References 22 publications

Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues

Social learning exploits the available auditory or visual cues

Diazepam Reduces Escape and Increases Closed-Arms Exploration in Gerbils After 5 min in the Elevated Plus-Maze

Assessing Mongolian gerbil emotional behavior: effects of two shock intensities and response-independent shocks during an extended inhibitory-avoidance task

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