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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Group-living animals must adjust the expression of their social
behaviour to changes in their social environment and to transitions
between life-history stages, and this social plasticity can be seen as
an adaptive trait that can be under positive selection when changes
in the environment outpace the rate of genetic evolutionary change.
Here, we propose a conceptual framework for understanding the
neuromolecular mechanisms of social plasticity. According to this
framework, social plasticity is achieved by rewiring or by
biochemically switching nodes of a neural network underlying social
behaviour in response to perceived social information. Therefore, at
the molecular level, it depends on the social regulation of gene
expression, so that different genomic and epigenetic states of this
brain network correspond to different behavioural states, and the
switches between states are orchestrated by signalling pathways that
interface the social environment and the genotype. Different types of
social plasticity can be recognized based on the observed patterns
of inter- versus intra-individual occurrence, time scale and
reversibility. It is proposed that these different types of social plasticity
rely on different proximate mechanisms at the physiological, neural
and genomic level.
Description
Keywords
Social behaviour Behavioural flexibility Neural plasticity Behavioural states Behavioural shifts Epigenetics
Citation
Journal of Experimental Biology, 218, 140-149.
Publisher
Company of Biologists