Affiliation:
1. ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4810, Australia
2. Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
3. Red Sea Research Center, Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Animals display remarkable variation in social behaviour. However, outside of rodents, little is known about the neural mechanisms of social variation, and whether they are shared across species and sexes, limiting our understanding of how sociality evolves. Using coral reef butterflyfishes, we examined gene expression correlates of social variation (i.e. pair bonding versus solitary living) within and between species and sexes. In several brain regions, we quantified gene expression of receptors important for social variation in mammals: oxytocin (
OTR
), arginine vasopressin (
V1aR
), dopamine (
D1R, D2R
) and mu-opioid (
MOR
). We found that social variation across individuals of the oval butterflyfish,
Chaetodon lunulatus,
is linked to differences in
OTR
,
V1aR, D1R, D2R
and
MOR
gene expression within several forebrain regions in a sexually dimorphic manner. However, this contrasted with social variation among six species representing a single evolutionary transition from pair-bonded to solitary living. Here,
OTR
expression within the supracommissural part of the ventral telencephalon was higher in pair-bonded than solitary species, specifically in males. These results contribute to the emerging idea that nonapeptide, dopamine and opioid signalling is a central theme to the evolution of sociality across individuals, although the precise mechanism may be flexible across sexes and species.
Funder
NSF EDEN Research Travel Award
Harvard Bauer Fellowship
L'Oreal For Women in Science
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
New York Stem Cell Foundation
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
14 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献