期刊
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
卷 210, 期 24, 页码 4351-4358出版社
COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.009399
关键词
eusocial; vertebrae; bone; social status; puberty; reproduction
类别
资金
- NIDCR NIH HHS [DE 016061] Funding Source: Medline
Naked mole-rats are fossorial African rodents that live in large, eusocial groups. Adult subordinate female mole-rats are reproductively suppressed by the dominant breeding female in their colonies. As a result, subordinate females remain reproductively quiescent for their entire lives unless they are removed from the suppressive presence of the dominant female. This makes subordinate female mole-rats a tractable model for studying phenotypic plasticity. We measured skeletal growth of subordinate, suppressed females as they changed reproductive status. After housing subordinate female mole-rats separately from their home colonies, these animals experienced a growth surge that dramatically increased their body mass and length. After removal from reproductive suppression, females showed an 82% increase in body mass and a 37% increase in the length of their lumbar spines. The lumbar vertebrae were the only skeletal structures that exhibited this puberty-like growth. After colony separation, body mass and lumbar vertebrae growth rates peaked and remained elevated for several weeks before returning to control levels-suggestive of a puberty-like 'growth spurt'. Although previous studies have characterized pregnancy-induced lumbar spine elongation in female mole- rats, we demonstrate a significant change in the body morphology of female mole-rats after removal from reproductive suppression but before the first pregnancy.
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