Effects of prenatal stress on personality and group level behaviour of juvenile mound building mice

• Auteur / Autrice : Océane Jean
• Direction : Heiko Georg Rodel
• Type : Projet de thèse
• Discipline(s) : Doctorat ethologie
• Date : Inscription en doctorat le 29/10/2018
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 13
• Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : École doctorale Galilée (Villetaneuse, Seine-Saint-Denis)

Résumé

Stress experienced by mothers during pregnancy has the potential to modulate the offspring’s behavioural and physiological development. The effects of maternal stress on offspring phenotype might not necessarily be pathological but can adaptively adjust the offspring to challenging environments. For example, pregnant females experiencing social stress during high population density may produce offspring with behavioural types being well adjusted to cope with such high density situations. The resulting differences in offspring behavioural phenotype can have functional consequences at the individual level - but also at the level of the sibling group, for example when littermates interact in a collective task necessary for their survival. In the mound building mouse (Mus spicilegus), juveniles from the same litter collectively build a large mound of soil and plant material in autumn. These mounds are essential for winter survival, as the juveniles stay in tunnels and burrows underneath, well protected from humidity and low temperatures. Presumably under high density situations, different sibling groups can join together to build the mound collectively (mixed-litter groups). First studies of our research team show that individual variation in the transport of mound building items are associated with an individual‘s personality type. In the proposed project, (i) the effects of maternal social stress on offspring personality and its consequences on the individual transport performance will be studied. (ii) At the group level, it will be studied how the distribution of personality types within a group of siblings affects the transport performance during mound building.