Courtship vocalizations of male mice do not always attract females

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Abstract
Male house mice ( Mus musculus ) emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during courtship and mating, which influence their copulatory success. Several studies have found that playbacks of male USVs attract females, though this response may depend on the presence of male scent, and one study suggested that females are more attracted to complex than simple USV types. We conducted three playback experiments with wild-derived female house mice to test these predictions. None of our results met our expectations: First, females were not more attracted to sequences of complex versus simple USVs. Second, females were also not more attracted to these syllables when compared to silence. Third, females showed no attraction towards more natural sequences containing simple and complex USVs compared to silence, even in the presence of male scent. Thus, we found no evidence that wild-derived female mice show approach behavior towards male USVs, regardless of their complexity or exposure to male olfactory stimuli. These findings raise questions about the repeatability and generalizability of playback studies in house mice and highlight the need for more studies aimed at determining the types of vocalizations and contexts under which mice do and do not show attraction or other responses to USVs.
Funding Information
  • Austrian Science Fund (P28141-B25)
  • Austrian Science Fund (P36446-B)
  • Human Frontier Science Program (RGP0003/2020)

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