This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Animal behavior ultimately determines survival and reproduction of individuals. In social species, behavior occurs within groups where the choices made by an individual is influenced by and influences others. Animals in groups communicate sophisticated information about group affiliation, reproductive status and internal state so that bystanders, or eavesdroppers, get valuable information simply from observation. However, it is not known how social information is communicated to and processed by the brain. The experiments in this project ask: How does being watched influence the behavior and physiology of an individual? How does receiving social information alter the brain? To answer the first question, the research team will measure how fighting males change their levels of brain gene expression and sex hormones in relation to being watched by audiences that vary both in sex and dominance status relative to those males. To answer the second question, females will be exposed to social information about a preferred mate and then circulating hormone levels as well as immediate early gene expression in the brain will be quantified. These experiments will allow discovery of how the brain responds to communication of information in a complex social environment. The project will include the training of a wide diversity of undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, a majority of whom will be members of groups underrepresented in science.
