Stereotype of mouse social competency and status revealed by a novel competition paradigm in combination with available paradigms

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Abstract

With the acceleration of urbanization process, psychological, behavioral and biological studies on social organization and competition are boosting. The mouse has been recognized as valuable and economic model animal for biomedical research in social behaviors, but the application of reliable, valid and easily executable social competition paradigm for mouse is still limited. Moreover, discrepant paradigms containing different competitive factors such as muscular confrontation, threatening level, boldness or timidity tendency might lead to task-specific win-or-lose outcomes and confusing rankings. Here, we developed a convenient mouse competition behavioral paradigm in which contenders were a pair of mice eager to take over the same food pellet hidden under a movable block in the middle of a narrow chamber where they were separated to the either right or left side. Our design mentality of this food pellet competition test (FPCT) avoids the direct violent competition between mice and facilitates to expose the psychological motivation of the contenders. Application of FPCT in combination with typically available paradigms, tube test and warm spot test (WST), discovered a stereotypic property of mouse social organization and competitivity in a given society of either males or females that were raised in an either 2– or 3-member cage, indicating that hierarchical sense of animals might be part of a comprehensive identify of self-recognition of individuals in an established society. More importantly, FPCT may largely facilitate the researches regarding the social organization and competition due to its reliability, validity and easy operability.

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