Abstract
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of laboratory rodents indicate animal emotional arousal and may serve as models of human disorders. We analysed spectrographically USV calls of pup and adult fat-tailed gerbils Pachyuromys duprasi during 420-s tests, including isolation, touch and handling. Based on combination of six different USV syllable contour shapes and six different note compositions, we classified 782 USV syllables of 24 pups aged 5–10 days to 18 types and 232 syllables of 7 adults to 24 types. Pups and adults shared 16 of these 26 USV types. Percentages of USV syllables with certain contour shapes differed between pups and adults. The contour shape and note composition significantly affected most acoustic variables of USV syllables in either pups or adults. The 1-note USV syllables were most common in either pups or adults. Pup USV syllables were overall longer and higher-frequency than adult ones, reminiscent of the USV ontogenetic pathway of bats and distinctive to rats and mice. We discuss that the USV syllable types of fat-tailed gerbils were generally similar in contour shapes and note compositions with USV syllable types of mice and rats, what means that software developed for automated classifying of mice ultrasound might be easily adapted or re-tuned to gerbil USV calls. However, using fat-tailed gerbils as model for biomedical research including control of USV vocalization is only possible since 6th day of pup life, because of the delayed emergence of USV calls in ontogeny of this species.
Highlights
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) indicate emotional arousal and impairments in rodents [1,2,3,4,5]
Of the 36 distinct USV syllable types potentially possible by combining the six syllable contours and six note compositions, in pups we detected only 18 types and in adults only 24 types; 16 types were shared by pups and adults (Tables 1 and 2)
Based on contour shape and note composition, we identified 24 distinct USV syllable types in adults and 18 in pups; 16 of these 26 types were shared by adults and pups
Summary
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) indicate emotional arousal and impairments in rodents [1,2,3,4,5]. Classifying discomfort-related ultrasonic calls is an important prerequisite for their applicability as indicators of emotional arousal and welfare [2,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Rodent USV are widely used in biomedical experiments modeling human affective and communicative disorders [11,14,15,16,17,18]. Current biomedical research is primarily based on studying laboratory mice and rats [1,19], other rodent species may possess by peculiar features, which would make them especially suitable as test animals for modeling certain diseases. The Mongolian gerbil Meriones unguiculatus represents an especially convenient animal model for human epilepsy [20,21] because of absence of connecting arteries between the basilar and carotid systems
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