Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Animals face various risks, threats, and often conflicting motivational demands in their environment. Prominent amongst these are parasites, predators, and toxins. Although it has long been acknowledged that exposure to parasites is a major cost of sociality, the important links between social behavior and the risk of exposure to parasites have only recently been appreciated. Although this interplay between social behaviors and responses to environmental risks and threats is important across species it has received limited research attention. When examining the impact of parasites it is crucial to consider both sex and age, recent social history, individual experience and immediate environmental and social factors. Firstly, we will consider how does the nature of the parasite threat affect behavioral, affective, and social cognitive responses in adolescent (a critical developmental period of risk exposure and taking) and adult male and female mice and rats. We will examine how social/sexual and associated approach/avoidance behaviors to parasite threat (odors and/or actual individuals) are affected by: the nature of the parasite threat (bacterial, viral, nematode); degree and history of parasite exposure; timing of pathogen exposure (adult or adolescent), sex of the individual; and environmental and social context. Secondly, we will investigate the neuromodulatory mechanisms underlying the behavioral responses to parasite threat. This will include examinations of the roles of various sex hormones (in particular estrogens and estrogens receptors), estrous phase, social neuropeptides (oxytocin and vasopressin), endogenous opioids and immune components. Thirdly, we will investigate how various social factors  and social context affect the avoidance of, and responses to, parasite threat. We will investigate how the threat of parasite exposure from conspecifics affects and biases social behavior and interactions and the roles of the affective state of `disgust'. Together, these investigations will determine how, when, and why parasite threat affects social and associated behaviors in males and females and reveal the important reciprocal relationships between social behavior and parasite threat. Collectively, our investigations will shed new light on the crucial questions of how various threats and risks affect social behavior and their neuromodulatory bases. These investigations will provide an unique platform for investigating the neuromodulatory mechanisms underlying the use of dynamic social information for parasite detection and avoidance by both adolescent and adult males and females.