AUTHOR=Lopes Patricia C. , Carlitz Esther H. D. , Kindel Morgan , König Barbara TITLE=Immune-Endocrine Links to Gregariousness in Wild House Mice JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2020 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00010 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00010 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=
Social interactions are critically important for survival and impact overall-health, but also impose costs on animals, such as exposure to contagious agents. The immune system can play a critical role in modulating social behavior when animals are sick, as has been demonstrated within the context of “sickness behaviors.” Can immune molecules affect or be affected by social interactions even when animals are not sick, therefore serving a role in mediating pathogen exposure? We tested whether markers of immune function in both the blood and the brain are associated with gregariousness, quantified as number of animals interacted with per day. To do this, we used remote tracking of social interactions of a wild population of house mice (