Sex-dependent control of pheromones on social organization within groups of wild house mice

Dominance hierarchy is a fundamental social phenomenon in a wide range of mammalian species, critically affecting fitness and health. Here, we investigate the role of pheromone signals in the control of social hier-archies and individual personalities within groups of wild mice. For this purpose, we combine high -throughput behavioral phenotyping with computational tools in freely interacting groups of wild house mice, males and females, in an automated, semi-natural system. We show that wild mice form dominance hierarchies in both sexes but use sex-specific strategies, displaying distinct male-typical and female-typical behavioral personalities that were also associated with social ranking. Genetic disabling of VNO-mediated pheromone detection generated opposite behavioral effects within groups, enhancing social interactions in males and reducing them in females. Behavioral personalities in the mutated mice displayed mixtures of male-typical and female-typical behaviors, thus blurring sex differences. In addition, rank-associated per-sonalities were abolished despite the fact that both sexes of mutant mice formed stable hierarchies. These findings suggest that group organization is governed by pheromone-mediated sex-specific neural circuits and pave the way to investigate the mechanisms underlying sexual dimorphism in dominance hierarchies un-der naturalistic settings.

Automated summary

In this study, the role of pheromone signals in social hierarchies and individual personalities of wild house mice was investigated. The research shows that wild mice form dominance hierarchies with sex-specific strategies. Genetic disabling of VNO-mediated pheromone detection generated opposite behavioral effects in males and females. Additionally, rank-associated personalities were abolished in mutant mice despite stable hierarchies. These findings suggest that group organization is governed by pheromone-mediated sex-specific neural circuits.