Male behavioral response to the urine odor of females in lesser mouse lemur (microcebus murinus miller, 1777) (cheirogaleidae, primates)

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Arrilton Araújo de
• Data de Publicação: 2003
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/24699
• topic: Urine odor; Chemical communication; Prosimian; Microcebus

Chemical signals play an important role in Microcebus murinus Miller, 1777 social communication, a representative species of prosimians. It presents the major and vomeronasal olfactory systems and uses mainly urine for chemical marking. I studied the effect of females’ urine on the behavior of 14 males in 3 group conditions: intact, vomeronasalectomized (VNx) and bulbectomized (Bx). Stimuli presented were pro-estrus female’s urine, post-estrus female’s urine, distilled water and female’s presence. The groups were submitted to two phases: familiarization in the cage (3 days), and experimental stage (4 days) when each stimulus was presented for 30 min once a day. Results showed that intact males could discriminate different chemical stimuli; VNx males continued to discriminate stimuli using the major olfactory system but not as efficiently as intact animals; Bx animals did not perform any olfactory discrimination. The reduction in olfactory discrimination by VNx and Bx males may have been due to a central action of bulb activity