Abstract
Wild mice maintained as a randomly breeding population in the laboratory were matched against domesticated mice from either the C57BL/6 or the DBA/2 inbred strain. Aggressive dominance was subsequently tested in environments familiar to one, both, or neither of the opponents. Opponents were either familiar or novel to each other. Wilds were dominant initially, but their tendency to dominate domestics subsequently decreased during later trials. Environmental familiarity enhanced the dominance performance of both inbred strains but exerted no significant effect on dominance by wilds. Opponent familiarity affected dominance only by weakly interacting with the effect of environmental familiarity on domestic performance. Findings are discussed with respect to (a) possible behavioral mechanisms responsible for the differences in dominance shown by domestic and wilds and (b) possible genetic mechanisms responsible for behavioral differences in laboratory vs. natural mouse populations.
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This research was supported under NSF grant GB-5284.
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Connor, J.L., Winston, H. & Bradford, H. Effects of domestication, environmental familiarity, and opponent familiarity on dominance in the mouse (Mus musculus L.). Behav Genet 3, 339–354 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01070217
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01070217