Female nursing partner choice in a population of wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus )

Frontiers in Zoology
Nicola HarrisonBarbara König

Abstract

Communal nursing in house mice is an example of cooperation where females pool litters in the same nest and indiscriminately nurse own and other offspring despite potential exploitation. The direct fitness benefits associated with communal nursing shown in laboratory studies suggest it to be a selected component of female house mice reproductive behaviour. However, past studies on communal nursing in free-living populations have debated whether it is a consequence of sharing the same nest or an active choice. Here using data from a long-term study of free-living, wild house mice we investigated individual nursing decisions and determined what factors influenced a female's decision to nurse communally. Females chose to nurse solitarily more often than expected by chance, but the likelihood of nursing solitarily decreased when females had more partners available. While finding no influence of pairwise relatedness on partner choice, we observed that females shared their social environment with genetically similar individuals, suggesting a female's home area consisted of related females, possibly facilitating the evolution of cooperation. Within such a home area females were more likely to nest communally when the general relatedne...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 14, 2018·Scientific Reports·Patricia C LopesBarbara König
Feb 15, 2021·Current Opinion in Neurobiology·Christian L Ebbesen, Robert C Froemke

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Software Mentioned

R
Coancestry
R package ‘ lme4 ’
MuMIn
GenAIEx

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