Neurotranscriptomic changes associated with chick-directed parental care in adult non-reproductive Japanese quail.

ABSTRACT: For many species, parental care critically affects offspring survival. But what drives animals to display parental behaviours towards young? In mammals, pregnancy-induced physiological transformations seem key in preparing the neural circuits that lead towards attraction (and reduced-aggression) to young. Beyond mammalian maternal behaviour, knowledge of the neural mechanisms that underlie young-directed parental care is severely lacking. We took advantage of a domesticated bird species, the Japanese quail, for which parental behaviour towards chicks can be induced in virgin non-reproductive adults through a sensitization procedure, a process that is not effective in all animals. We used the variation in parental responses to study neural transcriptomic changes associated with the sensitiz

SUBMITTER: Lopes PC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8322411 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature