Predatory aggression in lines of wild mice selected for interfemale aggression

Abstract

Mice descending from lines previously selected for high and low levels of interfemale aggression and from a nonselected control line were exposed to live crickets on two consecutive test days. Latencies both to attack and to eat the cricket were recorded. No line or sex differences in attacking were found, although latency to attack decreased over test days. Control line mice were more likely to engage in the eating of the cricket than either the high or low selected lines, suggesting that the selection procedure may have dissociated attacking and eating components of predatory behavior.

Genetically Defined Animal Models of Neurobehavioral Dysfunctions

“…Rather, there is considerable evidence showing that females in many species, including mice (Ebert, 1983;Floody, 1983) and humans (Hrdy, 1981;Langevin, 1991), can be and are aggressive. There are some genetic studies of offense, defense, infanticide, and predation in female mice; reviews of these will be cited in the relevant sections of this chapter.…”

“…The motor pattems are chase, sideways offensive posture, upright offensive posture, and bite-and-kick attacks; the bite targets are primarily the tail, rump, and back. The genetics of offense formale mice has been reviewed by Hewitt and Broadhurst (1983), Maxson (1981Maxson ( , 1991, Michard and Carlier ( 1985), Scott (1966), and Sirnon ( 1979); and the genetics of offensein female mice has been reviewed by Ebert (1983), Caims (1988), Hyde (1983), Lenington (1991), andParmigiani (1989). Here, the focus will be on Y chromosomal genes and offensein males.…”

“…The usual approach to this issue has been to determine the between-strain correlations for two or more types of aggression within males or females or to determine the between-sex correlation for a type of aggression across several strains (for examples, see Coming et al, 1977;Ebert, 1983;Hood and Caims, 1988;Jones and Brain, 1987). There are two methodological problems with this approach.…”