Puppy whines mediate maternal behavior in domestic dogs

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Massenet, Mathilde; Philippe, Romane; Pisanski, Katarzyna; Arnaud, Vincent; de Beauchesne, Lucie Barluet; Reynaud, Karine; Mathevon, Nicolas; Reby, David
• 署名单位: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (Inserm); Universite Jean Monnet; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Wroclaw; University of Quebec; University of Quebec Chicoutimi; Ecole Nationale Veterinaire d'Alfort (ENVA); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite de Tours; Institut Universitaire de France; Universite PSL; Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE); Universite Paris-Est-Creteil-Val-de-Marne (UPEC)
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-13045
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316818121
• 发表日期: 2024-05-28
• 关键词: mother-offspring recognition; source-filter theory; free-ranging dogs; vocal communication; individual recognition; contact calls; piglets; CONSEQUENCES; responses; cattle

摘要

In mammals, offspring vocalizations typically encode information about identity and body condition, allowing parents to limit alloparenting and adjust care. But how do these vocalizations mediate parental behavior in species faced with the problem of rearing not one, but multiple offspring, such as domestic dogs? Comprehensive acoustic analyses of 4,400 whines recorded from 220 Beagle puppies in 40 litters revealed litter and individual (within litter) differences in call acoustic structure. By then playing resynthesized whines to mothers, we showed that they provided more care to their litters, and were more likely to carry the emitting loudspeaker to the nest, in response to whine variants derived from their own puppies than from strangers. Importantly, care provisioning was attenuated by experimentally moving the fundamental frequency (f(o), perceived as pitch) of their own puppies' whines outside their litter-specific range. Within most litters, we found a negative relationship between puppies' whine f(o) and body weight. Consistent with this, playbacks showed that maternal care was stronger in response to high-pitched whine variants simulating relatively small offspring within their own litter's range compared to lower-pitched variants simulating larger offspring. We thus show that maternal care in a litter-rearing species relies on a dual assessment of offspring identity and condition, largely based on level-specific inter-and intra-litter variation in offspring call f(o). This dual encoding system highlights how, even in a long-domesticated species, vocalizations reflect selective pressures to meet species-specific needs. Comparative work should now investigate whether similar communication systems have convergently evolved in other litter-rearing species.