Behavioural Processes 57 (2002) 37–50
Maternal-care behavior and life-history traits in house mice
(Mus domesticus) artificially selected for high voluntary
wheel-running activity
I. Girard *, J.G. Swallow
1
, P.A. Carter
2
, P. Koteja
3
, J.S. Rhodes,
T. Garland Jr
4
Department of Zoology, Uni6ersity of Wisconsin-Madison,
430
Lincoln Dri6e, WI
53706
, USA
Received 4 August 2000; received in revised form 30 October 2001; accepted 1 November 2001
Abstract
To test the hypothesis that selective breeding for high voluntary wheel running negatively affects maternal
performance in house mice, we observed maternal behavior and compared litter size and mass, in replicate lines of
selected (N=4) and control (N =4) mice from generations 20 and 21 of an artificial selection experiment. At
generation 21, selected-line females ran 2.8-times more revolutions per day than females from random-bred control
lines, when tested at approximately 6 weeks of age as part of the normal selection protocol. After giving birth, dams
from selected and control lines exhibited similar frequencies of maternal behaviors and also spent similar amounts of
time in general locomotor activity at litter ages of both 9 and 16 days. Dams from selected lines also performed
equally well as controls in repeated pup-retrieval trials. At first parturition, selected-line dams averaged 2.4 g smaller
in body mass as compared with dams from the control lines; however, neither litter size nor litter mass at birth
(generation 20) or at weaning (generation 21) differed significantly between selected and control lines. We conclude
that, at least under the husbandry conditions employed, maternal behavior and reproductive output at first
parturition are genetically independent of wheel-running behavior. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
:
Activity; Body size; Correlated response; Exercise; Reproduction
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* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-608-262-4437; fax: +1-608-265-6320.
E-mail addresses
:
igirard@facstaff.wisc.edu (I. Girard), jswallow@usd.edu (J.G. Swallow), pacarter@wsu.edu (P.A. Carter),
koteja@eko.uj.edu.pl (P. Koteja), justinrhodes@students.wisc.edu (J.S. Rhodes), tgarland@citrus.ucr.edu (T. Garland, Jr).
1
Present address: Department of Biology, University of South Dakota, SD 57067, USA.
2
Present address: Department of Zoology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA.
3
Present address: Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University, ul. Ingardena 6, 30-060 Krako´w, Poland.
4
Present address: Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
0376-6357/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0376-6357(01)00206-6