Meeting Abstract
Many animals perform rapid display maneuvers in sexual and competitive interactions, and the ability to produce these physically demanding body movements often requires muscular adaptations. Constitutive changes to the expression levels of calcium trafficking proteins that help set muscle contraction-relaxation speeds, including sarco/endoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPases (SERCA) and parvalbumin (PV), may be one means of supporting this behavior. We examined this issue in downy and red-bellied woodpeckers by measuring mRNA levels of genes that encode SERCA and PV in the main muscle that mediates rapid drumming behavior (longus colli ventralis) and a second muscle that is not involved in drumming (pectoralis). Drums are atonal sonations produced when individuals repeatedly strike their bill against a resonate surface at ~15 Hz (strikes/second), and thus we hypothesize the SERCA and PV are expressed more abundantly in the longus colli, relative to the PEC. We also measured expression of these two genes in white-breasted nuthatches, a passerine that drills into trees to forage but not to generate social signals. Our data reveal that genes expressing calcium buffering and trafficking proteins are upregulated in muscles associated drumming behavior. This effect is especially pronounced when we examined PV, as it was expressed over 40-fold more in the woodpeckers’ longus colli, compared to the pectoralis. These findings suggest that constituative upregulation of genes involved in muscular calcium signaling processes may support an ability to produce rapid drum signals.
