Sexual motivation suppresses paternal behaviour of male gerbils during their mates' postpartum oestrus

Abstract

Adult male Mongolian gerbils, Meriones unguiculatus, avoid contact with their young on the day that the young are born. However, on succeeding days, fathers spend nearly as much time in contact with their offspring as do mothers. We undertook a series of studies to investigate the causes of the day-to-day change in male parental behaviour. In experiment 1, we tested males' response to pups before, after and on the day of their mates' parturition, and found that males were more parental both before and after the day of birth of their young than on that day. In experiment 2, we compared the parental behaviour of males paired either with intact or with ovariectomized dams (which do not come into postpartum oestrus) and found that males that were mated to intact females were less attentive to pups on the day of their birth than were the males mated to ovariectomized females. In experiment 3, we compared the parental responses of castrated and intact males to newborn pups and found that castrated males were more parental than intact males. In experiment 4, we compared the parental responses of males that were exposed to postpartum oestrous females but prevented from mating for 24 h. Extending the period of male sexual arousal to 24 h inhibited paternal responsiveness to neonates for 24 h. We interpret these results as being consistent with the hypothesis that on the day of birth of a litter, a male's parental behaviour is inhibited by the motivation to mate during his partner's postpartum oestrus.