This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Objective: To determine the facilitators of good parenting in primates. Prolactin has been implicated in promoting paternal care behaviors but little evidence of causality has been found to date except for birds and fish. This study was designed to examine the possible causal relationships between prolactin and male parenting behaviors, reproductive hormones, and physical changes in cooperatively breeding common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus. Fifteen parentally experienced fathers were studied over three consecutive infant care periods during two weeks prior and three weeks following their mates'parturition under three-treatment conditions: normal control pregnancy, decreased prolactin and elevated prolactin. The treatments significantly altered the serum prolactin levels in the fathers. Using three methods of determining a father's level of parental care: infant carrying, family effort and responsiveness to infant stimulus tests, we found that only the male's response to infant stimuli was altered by the hormone treatments. Lowering prolactin significantly reduced male responsiveness to infant stimuli but elevating prolactin showed the same effect. Hormonal sampling indicated that testosterone levels showed an inverse relationship to prolactin levels during a normal peripartum period and prolactin treatment reduced this relationship. Prepartum estradiol levels were significantly elevated during the lowered prolactin treatment and estradiol was significantly lowered postpartum with the elevated prolactin treatment. Father's weight decreased significantly by the third week of infant care during the normal treatment. Males in the elevated prolactin treatment lost little or no weight from prepartum while in the lowered prolactin treatment showed the most weight loss. The present findings did not distinguish a direct causal relationship of prolactin on behavior in experienced fathers but did find an interaction with other hormones and weight gain. This research used WNPRC Assay Services and the marmoset colony. Funding ended before this reporting period;publications have resulted. PUBLICATIONS: Ziegler TE, Prudom SL, Zahed SR, Parlow AF, Wegner F (2009). Prolactin's mediative role in male parenting in parentally experienced marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). HORMONES AND BEHAVIOR 56:436-443. PMCID: PMC2761515 Ziegler, TE, Prudom, SL, Zahed, SR. (2009). Variation in male parenting in the common marmoset monkey and its neuroendocrine control. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, 21: 739-744. PMID: 19367571
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