Differential effect of handling on adult aggression in male mice bidirectionally selected for attack latency
✍ Scribed by R.F. Benus
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 28 KB
- Volume
- 25
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0096-140X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Individual variation in intermale aggression is to a significant degree based upon genetic variation, but environmental factors can also exert their influence on the level of aggression. Moreover, genotype-environment interactions are a well-known phenomenon. In the present experiment, I tested whether cage size or handling during development had an influence on adult attack latency scores. To be able to study a genotype-environment interaction, mice from two bidirectionally on attack latency selected lines were used. The size of the cage in which the mice grew up had no long-term effect on aggression, neither in the high-nor in the low-aggressive line. Handling, however, significantly increased the adult aggression of males from the low-aggressive line. Despite the differential effect of handling on genetically high-and low-aggressive mice, handling was not able to undo the marked differences in attack latencies between mice from both lines. Aggr. Behav. 25:365-368, 1999.