Males familiarity

Bioassays were performed in 1995, 1996, and 1998. Test males included the two donor males (age 33-36 y), an immature male familiar with the donors (age 12-13 y) and two males at different locations (age 10 and 26 y). Three of the test males, (age 26-36 y) experience musth once annually. Two young teenage males (age 10-13 y) had not yet experienced their first musth episode. 

Rosacea is a common disease The prevalence ranges from 1% up to 10% of the population. It affects mainly skin phototypes I and II, between 30 and 65 years of age. Rosacea is more frequent in females than in males, but it is more severe in males. Familiarity is reported in 15-30% of patients. 

In other words, if there were 100 persons in the group and the ratio of females to males were the same, 75 of the group would be female. Percentage is a familiar concept to anyone who pays sales taxes. 

In general, rodents that have been exposed to an artificial odor during early life show an increased attraction to stimulus animals scented with that odor as adults. Increased odor preference following early exposure has been observed in female mice (Mainardi, Marsan and Pasquali 1965) and male rats (Marr and Gardner 1965). In some cases, this odor preference translates into increases in mating efficiency with females of the familiar scent. Specifically, male rats reared with citral-scented dams ejaculate faster when mating with citral-scented females compared to normal-scented females (Fillion and Blass 1986). 

While mate choice for unfamiliar partners might be explained by the fitness benefits of multiple mating, inbreeding avoidance, and favouring rare genotypes, preference for familiar males is also sometimes observed. Why would females choose relatively familiar males as mates, given the benefits outlined above of avoiding such males ... 

Hughes, K.A., Du, L., Rodd, F.H. and Reznick, D.N. (1999) Familiarity leads to female mate preference for novel males in the guppy Poecilia reticulata. Anim. Behav. 58, 907-916. 

Slagsvold, T., Johnsen, A., Lampe, H.M. and Lifjcld, J.T. (2001) Do female pied flycatchers seek extrapair copulations with familiar males A test of the incomplete knowledge hypothesis. Behav. Ecol. 12, 412-418. 

Tokarz, R.R. (2006) Importance of prior physical contact with familiar females in the development of a male courtship and mating preference for unfamiliar females in the lizard Anolis sagrei. Herpetologica 62, 115-124. 

The voles used in these experiments were housed singly for three-four weeks before being used as a scent donor or subject. Meadow voles born and reared under a long photoperiod reach sexual maturity by 50 d old (Nadeau 1985), and are sexually receptive and readily mate with sexually receptive opposite-sex conspecifics (delBarco-Trillo and Ferkin 2004 Pierce, Ferkin and Williams 2005). Male and female subjects and scent donors were sexually naive and not familiar with one another. Female voles do not undergo estrous cycles, rather they are induced into estrous and ovulation (Keller 1985). 

We measured the amount of time that 2-3, 8-9 and 12-13 mo old male and female meadow voles spent self-grooming when exposed to an 8 g piece of cotton nesting material scented by opposite-sex conspecifics that were either 2-3, 8-9 or 12-13 mo old. There were 12 different male and female subjects and 16 different opposite-sex scent donors used for each odor condition. Each subject underwent three selfgrooming tests, one test for each of the three age classes of scent donors. The order of the three tests was random. Subjects were not used as scent donors and vice versa. Scent donors and subjects were similar in size to one another (within 7 g) and were not related or familiar to one another. 

Trigosso-Venario, R., Labra, A. and Niemeyer, H. N. (2002) Interactions between males of the lizard Liolaemus tenuis roles of familiarity and memory. Ethology 108, 1057-1064. 

Ecologically, female meadow voles are territorial, know their neighbors, and are more tolerant of each other. They exemplify the dear enemy concept familiar neighbors reduce aggression toward one another because they pose less threat to each other than newcomers without a territoiy, who might compete for territory, mates, or resources. Males are dispersal prone, and neighbor relations are more ephemeral. Each male s home range overlaps with those of several females (Ferkin, 1988). 

Preexposing rodents to the odor of a conspecific can alter the response to this individual when it is again encountered later, compared with responses to con-specifics whose odor is unfamiliar. For example, female brown lemmings, Lem-mus trimocrunatus, were experimentally exposed to the odor of a male. These females engaged in more contact social behavior with that now familiar male than females who had experienced odor from a different male or none at all. The males whose odor the females had experienced ejaculated more frequently than males under the other two conditions (Coopersmith and Banks, 1983). 

Urban feral cats of both sexes sniff marks of sprayed urine more if the donor is a strange cat (from a different town) and respond least to the urine of a familiar cat. Since one male roams over the territories of several females, it is assumed that male-male competition has selected males that spray mark more and respond more strongly to urine marks (Natoli, 1985). 

Another example from carnivores is the odor of anal sac secretion in the ferret, Mustelafuro. Ferrets discriminate strange from familiar individuals by this odor. (They also use anal sac secretion to distinguish males from females, a familiar individual s from own odor, and fresh from 1-day old odor, but not between fresh and odor only 2 hours old nor anestrous from estrous females [Clapperton etal., 1988]). 

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