Article
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Social Nesting, Animal Welfare and Disease Monitoring
Version 1
: Received: 20 March 2021 / Approved: 22 March 2021 / Online: 22 March 2021 (15:46:24 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Giménez-Llort, L.; Torres-Lista, V. Social Nesting, Animal Welfare, and Disease Monitoring. Animals 2021, 11, 1079. Giménez-Llort, L.; Torres-Lista, V. Social Nesting, Animal Welfare, and Disease Monitoring. Animals 2021, 11, 1079.
Abstract
The assessment of welfare and disease progression in animal models is critical. Most tools rely on evaluating individual subjects, whereas social behaviors, also sensitive to acute illness, chronic diseases, or mental health, are scarcely monitored because of their complexity, are invasive, and time-consuming. We propose the evaluation of social nesting, a species-typical behavior naturally occurring in standard housing conditions, for such behavioral monitoring. We provide an example of its use to evaluate social deficits and the long-term effects of neonatal sensorial stimulation in male and female adult 3xTg-AD mice for Alzheimer's disease compared to sex- and age-matched NTg counterparts with normal aging. Social nesting was sensitive to genotype (worse in 3xTg-AD mice), sex (worse in males), profile, and treatment (distinct temporal patterns, time to observe the maximum score and incidence of the perfect nest). Since social nesting can be easily included in housing routines, this neuroethological approach can be useful for animal's welfare, monitoring the disease's progress, and evaluating potential risk factors and effects of preventive/therapeutical strategies. Finally, the non-invasive, painless, simple, short time and low-cost features of this home-cage monitoring are advantages that make social nesting feasible to be successfully implemented in most animal department settings.
Keywords
nest-building; social behavior; behavioral monitoring, animal welfare, 3xTg-AD mice; Alzheimer's disease; gender medicine; early-life events; early-life interventions; long-term effects
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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