Individual history of winning and hierarchy landscape influence stress susceptibility in mice
Curation statements for this article:-
Curated by eLife
Evaluation Summary:
This report by LeClair et al. shows the importance of considering social dominance rank and history of winning/losing rank to define susceptibility to stress in mice. It has many strengths, including an elegant experimental design, including experiments in both males and females, and carefully considering two models of social defeat in females, and an excellent writing and representation of the data.
(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (eLife)
- Neuroscience (eLife)
Abstract
Social hierarchy formation is strongly evolutionarily conserved. Across species, rank within social hierarchy has large effects on health and behavior. To investigate the relationship between social rank and stress susceptibility, we exposed ranked male and female mice to social and non-social stressors and manipulated social hierarchy position. We found that rank predicts same sex social stress outcomes: dominance in males and females confers resilience while subordination confers susceptibility. Pre-existing rank does not predict non-social stress outcomes in females and weakly does so in males, but rank emerging under stress conditions reveals social interaction deficits in male and female subordinates. Both history of winning and rank of cage mates affect stress susceptibility in males: rising to the top rank through high mobility confers resilience and mice that lose dominance lose stress resilience, although gaining dominance over a subordinate animal does not confer resilience. Overall, we have demonstrated a relationship between social status and stress susceptibility, particularly when taking into account individual history of winning and the overall hierarchy landscape in male and female mice.
Article activity feed
-
-
Evaluation Summary:
This report by LeClair et al. shows the importance of considering social dominance rank and history of winning/losing rank to define susceptibility to stress in mice. It has many strengths, including an elegant experimental design, including experiments in both males and females, and carefully considering two models of social defeat in females, and an excellent writing and representation of the data.
(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)
-
Joint Public Review:
The authors established rank in cohorts of four animals using the tube test and calculated weighted David's scores (DS) to classify animals as subordinate, dominant, or intermediate. The validity of the DS was determined using a warm corner test. After ranking, animals were exposed to social or non-social stress and evaluated for both social interaction and active coping. Finally, the authors asked whether a change in dominance would affect stress susceptibility. The major findings were that dominant males, but not females, exhibited resilience phenotypes, and that subordinates of both sexes exhibit a reduction in social interaction after non-social stress. A major strength of the research is in its approach to sex as a biological variable - males and females were studied in parallel, allowing for confident …
Joint Public Review:
The authors established rank in cohorts of four animals using the tube test and calculated weighted David's scores (DS) to classify animals as subordinate, dominant, or intermediate. The validity of the DS was determined using a warm corner test. After ranking, animals were exposed to social or non-social stress and evaluated for both social interaction and active coping. Finally, the authors asked whether a change in dominance would affect stress susceptibility. The major findings were that dominant males, but not females, exhibited resilience phenotypes, and that subordinates of both sexes exhibit a reduction in social interaction after non-social stress. A major strength of the research is in its approach to sex as a biological variable - males and females were studied in parallel, allowing for confident evaluation of the role sex plays in experimental outcomes. The discussion is well written and thoughtful. Although the directionality of the results is not particularly surprising (broadly speaking, resilience in dominant animals and susceptibility in subordinates), this is a thorough characterization of the relationship between social status and stress effects. That said, at least some investigation into known endocrine factors that relate to social hierarchies (e.g. testosterone) would have been appropriate.
-
