Abstract
An animal's emotional responses are the result of its cognitive appraisal of a situation. This appraisal is notably influenced by the possibility of an individual to exert control over an aversive event. Although the fact that environment controllability decreases emotional responses in animals is well established, far less is known about its potential trans-generational effects. As the levels of avian yolk hormones can vary according to the mother's environment, we hypothesized that housing environment of mothers would modulate the quality of her eggs and in turn her offspring's behaviour. Two groups of female Japanese quail were constituted: a group that had access to a place to hide in their home-cage (Hd, n = 20) and a group that had nowhere to hide (NoHd, n = 20) when stressed. Both groups were submitted to daily human disturbances for a twenty-day-period. Hd females produced eggs with both less testosterone and androstenedione than did NoHd females. The emotional and social reactivity of Hd females' offspring were lower and their growth was slower than those of NoHd females' offspring. Our results show that a minor difference in housing environment had substantial effects on eggs and offspring. The presence of a shelter probably helped quail to cope with daily human disturbances, producing less reactive offspring. This transgenerational effect caused by an opportunity to hide could lead to applications in care of laboratory animals, conservation biology and animal welfare.
Highlights
An animal has to cope with various stressful situations in connection with foraging, predation and variations of its physical and social environment
The bd colour parameter did not differ significantly between eggs laid by Hd females and eggs laid by NoHd females either before human disturbances or during human disturbances (23.060.5 versus 21.960.4 and 22.860.5 versus 22.760.5) (ANOVA for repeated measures : group, F1,35 = 1.16, P = 0.29; period, F1,35 = 2.42, P = 0.13)
As expected less androgens were found in eggs of females that had the possibility to hide from human disturbances, and the emotional reactivity of offspring exposed to these lower levels of androgens was lower
Summary
An animal has to cope with various stressful situations in connection with foraging, predation and variations of its physical and social environment. An animal’s emotional responses to these events seem to result from its appraisal of the situation. The possibility for farm animals to exert control over their environment reduced the effects of aversive events [4] and decreased their fear reactions [5,6]. Aversive events before or during egg formation consistently influenced the quality of eggs and offspring phenotypes of several birds species [7,8]. This suggests that the possibility to exert control over aversive events could moderate maternal effects
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