SELF-GROOMING AS A SEXUALLY DIMORPHIC COMMUNICATIVE-BEHAVIOR IN MEADOW VOLES, MICROTUS-PENNSYLVANICUS

Self-grooming may provide a means for broadcasting scent to conspecifi cs. Four experiments investigated this hypothesis in meadow voles. In the first experiment, male voles but not female voles groomed more in response to scent from an opposite-sex conspecific than a same-sex con specific. In the second experiment, male voles groomed more in respons e to ovariectomized females receiving replacement oestradiol than to o variectomized females receiving no oestradiol replacement. Self-groomi ng by female voles did not vary with the reproductive state of male sc ent donors. In the third experiment, males showed no difference in gro oming in response to odours of a short-photoperiod male versus a short -photoperiod female, again indicating that the grooming response of ma les depends on the reproductive state of scent donors. These three exp eriments all suggested a communicative function for scent-elicited gro oming. In the final experiment, the responses of females to males that had engaged in self-grooming was examined. Females spent more time in vestigating scent collected from the anogenital area of a male that ha d recently self-groomed at a high rate than they did from a male that had groomed at a low rate. Thus self-grooming by males increases the a ttractiveness of at least one of their scents to females. (C) 1996 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour