Female preference for males that have exclusively marked or invaded territories depends on male presence and its identity in the subterranean rodent Ctenomys talarum

FANJUL, M.S.; VARAS, MARIA FLORENCIA; ZENUTO, R.R.

ETHOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 124 p. 579 - 590

0179-1613

Territorialscent-marking provides chemical records of male competitive interactions thatare available to females, who gain valuable information to assess and identify bestquality partners. In this context, the solitary subterranean rodent tuco-tuco (Ctenomys talarum) offers excellentpossibilities to evaluate the effects of male exclusive scent marking ofterritories on female assessment. For evaluation, we used wild caught individualsof C. talarum, manipulated their scentmarks within the territories in captive conditions, and staged preference testswhere females were able to choose between exclusive and invaded territories. Theevaluation was performed in two scenarios considering the identity of theintruder scent mark: territories invaded by a strange male and territoriesinvaded by a neighbour male. Femalesinvestigated the chemical cues deposited on the substrate of the exclusivelymarked territory more frequently. Next, females displayed equal interest toscent samples of both males presented in a Y-maze. Finally, when females couldgain access to both individually isolated males and their scent markedterritories, they spent more time within invaded territories despite they visitedthem with the same frequency. Moreover, females tried to get in contact byscratching the mesh of the owner of the invaded territory more frequently. We found that females of C. talarum evaluate the homogeneity (exclusiveness) of scent markswithin a male territory, and then show preferences in relation to the identityof the intruder?s scent ?whether strange or neighbour.