a place to hide in the home-cage decreases yolk androgen levels and offspring emotional reactivity in japanese quail躲在笼子的地方减少在日本鹌鹑蛋黄雄激素水平和后代的情感反应.pdfVIP

A Place to Hide in the Home-Cage Decreases Yolk Androgen Levels and Offspring Emotional Reactivity in Japanese Quail 1 ¤a¤b¤c¤d 2¤a¤b¤c¤d ´ 1 1 Vanessa Guesdon * , Aline Bertin , Cecilia Houdelier , Sophie Lumineau , Laureline 1 2 ¨ 3 1 Formanek , Kurt Kotrschal , Erich Mostl , Marie-Annick Richard-Yris ´ ¨ 1 UMR CNRS 6552, Ethologie Animale et Humaine, Universite de Rennes 1, Rennes, France, 2 Konrad-Lorenz-Forschungsstelle, University of Vienna, Grunau, Austria, 3 Department of Natural Sciences, Biochemistry, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria Abstract An animal’s emotional responses are the result of its cognitive appraisal of a situation. This appraisal is notably influenced by the possibility of an individual to exert control over an aversive event. Although the fact that environment controllability decreases emotional responses in animals is well established, far less is known about its potential trans-generational effects. As the levels of avian yolk hormones can vary according to the mother’s environment, we hypothesized that housing environment of mothers would modulate the quality of her eggs and in turn her offspring’s behaviour. Two groups of female Japanese quail were constituted: a group that had access to a place to hide in their home-cage (Hd, n = 20) and a group that had nowhere to hide (NoHd, n = 20) when stressed. Both groups were submitted to daily human disturbances for a twenty-day-period.