Social status and ultrasonic vocalizations of male mice

Evidence for an audience effect in mice: male social partners alter the male vocal response to female cues

“…This has led to the belief that these vocalizations are directed at the female and that they play a role in male-female interactions. While female odor is also necessary to reliably elicit vocalizations from pairs of male mice (current study; Nyby et al, 1976;Sales, 1972;Stowers et al, 2002;Whitney et al, 1973), we found that in this context, males primarily vocalize when they are close to one another, rather than when they are near the female odor or when they are independently exploring the environment. This suggests that when a male audience is present, males may be directing their vocalizations at the other male, instead of, or in addition to, the potential female partner.…”

Ultrasonic vocalizations in house mice:

“…However, at this stage they already produce a variety of sounds, mostly pure ultrasounds (Ehret and Bernecker, 1986;Hahn and Lavooy, 2005) that function to elicit maternal care (Branchi et al, 1998;Hahn and Lavooy, 2005). The rate of USV production in house mice increases during the first 6-7 days of life, peaks around day 8, and then starts to decrease until the total disappearance of these calls after 14-16 days (Nyby et al, 1976;Elwood and Keeling, 1982), when pups have grown fur and begin to thermoregulate independently. Pup USVs change during this period both in call length and frequency characteristics (Hahn et al, 1998).…”

“…group movement) (Bradbury and Vehrencamp, 1998;Owings and Morton, 1998). and Whitney, 1985;Warburton et al, 1989), and the sex of the adult stimulus animal is critical for the elicitation of USVs: male house mice emit USVs when presented with female mice or their urinary scent, and emit few, if any, USVs when presented with male scent (Nyby et al, 1976;Musolf et al, 2010). This sexspecific stimulus response is precisely the opposite for females, but female-female pairs produce USVs at comparable rates (at least during the first minutes of social interaction) (Maggio and Whitney, 1985;Gourbal et al, 2004;Costantini and D'Amato, 2006).…”

“…Male ultrasound production is only found in individuals at sexual maturity (ca. 55 days) (Whitney et al, 1973;Nyby et al, 1976), when the concentrations of circulating androgens begin to increase, and males begin emitting 70-kHz ultrasounds in response to females, in association with other courtship behaviours (Sales, 1972b;Whitney et al, 1973). Castration reduces adult male calling (Dizinno and Whitney, 1977) and androgen replacement restores it (Nunez et al, 1978;Nunez and Tan, 1984;Warburton et al, 1989), indicating a strong link between the levels of circulating sex hormones and call production.…”

“…More than one century ago, song-like features were reported from rare individual house mice, which sang at audible frequencies (Farr, 1857;Coburn, 1912; reviewed in Dice, 1932), and it was predicted that singing might be common in M. musculus and would occur at ultrasonic frequencies (Sidebotham, 1877;Dice, 1932). In the 1970s, Gillian Sales, Günter Ehret, and John Nyby and colleagues independently pioneered work on the complexity, proximate control and evolutionary origins of USVs in pups and adult house mice (Sales, 1972b;Ehret, 1975;Nyby et al, 1976). More recently, a detailed, qualitative spectrographic analysis of laboratory mice concluded that male USVs fulfil the criteria for song (i.e.…”