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Novel Competition test for food rewards reveals stable dominance status in adult male rats

Diana F Costa, View ORCID ProfileMarta A Moita, View ORCID ProfileCristina Márquez
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.24.312033
Diana F Costa
1Neural Circuits of Social Behavior Laboratory. Instituto de Neurociencias (CSIC-UMH), Avenida Ramon y Cajal s/n, Sant Joan d’Alacant, 03550. Alicante, Spain
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Marta A Moita
2Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory. Champalimaud Research. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Av. Brasilia, 1400-038. Lisbon, Portugal
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Cristina Márquez
1Neural Circuits of Social Behavior Laboratory. Instituto de Neurociencias (CSIC-UMH), Avenida Ramon y Cajal s/n, Sant Joan d’Alacant, 03550. Alicante, Spain
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  • For correspondence: cmarquez@umh.es
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Abstract

Social hierarchy is a potent modulator of behavior, that is typically established through overt agonistic interactions between individuals in the group. Once established, social ranks are maintained through subtler interactions allowing the redirection of energy away from agonistic interactions towards other needs. The available tasks for assessing social rank in rats allow the study of the mechanisms by which social hierarches are formed in early phases but fail to assess the maintenance of established hierarchies between stable pairs of animals, which might rely on distinct neurobiological mechanisms. Here we present and validate a novel trial-based dominancy assay, the modified Food Competition test, where established social hierarchies can be identified in the home cage of non-food deprived pairs of male rats. In this task, we introduce a small conflict in the home cage, where access to a new feeder containing palatable pellets can only be gained by one animal at a time. We found that this subtle conflict triggered asymmetric social interactions and resulted in higher consumption of food by one of the animals in the pair, which reliably predicted hierarchy in other tests. Our findings reveal stable dominance status in pair-housed rats and provide a novel tool for the evaluation of established social hierarchies, the modified Food Competition test, that is robust and easy to implement.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Final version after peer review.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted June 29, 2021.
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Novel Competition test for food rewards reveals stable dominance status in adult male rats
Diana F Costa, Marta A Moita, Cristina Márquez
bioRxiv 2020.09.24.312033; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.24.312033
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Novel Competition test for food rewards reveals stable dominance status in adult male rats
Diana F Costa, Marta A Moita, Cristina Márquez
bioRxiv 2020.09.24.312033; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.24.312033

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