Communication is key: Mother-offspring signaling can affect behavioral responses and offspring survival in feral horses (Equus caballus)
| Autor: | Daniel I. Rubenstein, Cassandra M.V. Nuñez |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Topography animal diseases Social Sciences Developmental Signaling Mother offspring 01 natural sciences Developmental psychology Signal Initiation Sociology Cell Signaling Psychology Animal communication Mammals Islands Multidisciplinary Behavior Animal Animal Behavior biology Physics Mechanisms of Signal Transduction 05 social sciences Eukaryota Social Communication Foal Vertebrates Physical Sciences Medicine Female Research Article Signal Transduction Offspring Science Equines Affect (psychology) 010603 evolutionary biology biology.animal Acoustic Signals Animals Juvenile 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Horses 050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology Behavior Landforms Organisms Biology and Life Sciences Geomorphology Acoustics Cell Biology Bond formation biology.organism_classification Equus Communications Animal Communication Amniotes Earth Sciences Zoology |
| Zdroj: | PLoS ONE, Vol 15, Iss 4, p e0231343 (2020) PLoS ONE |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0231343 |
| Popis: | Acoustic signaling plays an important role in mother-offspring recognition and subsequent bond-formation. It remains unclear, however, if mothers and offspring use acoustic signaling in the same ways and for the same reasons throughout the juvenile stage, particularly after mutual recognition has been adequately established. Moreover, despite its critical role in mother-offspring bond formation, research explicitly linking mother-infant communication strategies to offspring survival are lacking. We examined the communicative patterns of mothers and offspring in the feral horse (Equus caballus) to better understand 1) the nature of mother-offspring communication throughout the first year of development; 2) the function(s) of mother- vs. offspring-initiated communication and; 3) the importance of mare and foal communication to offspring survival. We found that 1) mares and foals differ in when and how they initiate communication; 2) the outcomes of mare- vs. foal-initiated communication events consistently differ; and 3) the communicative patterns between mares and their foals can be important for offspring survival to one year of age. Moreover, given the importance of maternal activity to offspring behavior and subsequent survival, we submit that our data are uniquely positioned to address the long-debated question: do the behaviors exhibited during the juvenile stage (by both mothers and their young) confer delayed or immediate benefits to offspring? In summary, we aimed to better understand 1) the dynamics of mother-offspring communication, 2) whether mother-offspring communicative patterns were important to offspring survival, and 3) the implications of our research regarding the function of the mammalian juvenile stage. Our results demonstrate that we have achieved those aims. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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