Comparison of the activity of some phosphatases in the midventral gland and nonspecific sebaceous glands of the neck in the Campbell hamster (Phodopus campbelli)

Abstract

Many skin glands of animals are a source of various olfactory signals. On some skin areas, these glands increase in size and fuse to form large sebaceous acini separated by connective-tissue septa. An example of such glands is the specific midventral gland, which is characteristic of many rodent species. In the neck area, hair sebaceous glands increase in size but never fuse into acini, even at elevated testosterone concentrations in blood. This type of glands is regarded as nonspecific. The role of these glands in life of animals remains obscure. The phenomenon of marking with specific skin glands has long been drawing attention of researchers [1]. It is known that the functional activity of a gland depends on the specific metabolic situation at a given stage of ontogeny [2, 3]. It was established that the parameters of various skin glands in the same animal correlate both with one another and with the parameters of sex glands [4]. However, the relationship between marking behavior and the functional state of glands involved in marking remains to be elucidated. Scent marks left by different animals are important elements maintaining the social structure of populations. In nature, these marks serve for both passive territorial defense and for creating an “informational field” optimizing intrapopulation processes [5]. Comparative histochemical studies have been long used for analyzing the structural‐chemical organization of functionally analogous organs [6]. The diversity of specific differentiation variants is based on respective metabolic modifications, which ultimately determines the functional state of skin glands whose parameters undergo age-related, seasonal, and other changes. Data on the correlation between enzymatic activity in different types of glands and their marking activity in rodent ontogeny are scanty. The goal of this study was to demonstrate the enzymatic specificity of sebaceous glands of the neck and to determine the correlation between this specificity and the histochemical characteristics of the midventral gland at certain stages of