Meeting Abstract
Understanding how animals are affected by their social environment is a major focus in organismal biology. For example, social challenges are thought to adaptively prepare animals for future social instability, but it is not clear whether and how this process occurs at the genomic level across the diversity of tissues involved in behavioral responses. We experimentally manipulated the social environment for free-living male dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis), and we compared acute challenged males, persistently challenged males, and unmanipulated controls in patterns of genome-wide gene expression. With these data, we characterized socially sensitive gene networks and the hubs that coordinate responses within and among 11 tissues from the brain and body. We found that social challenges had both immediate and long-lasting effects on aggressive behavior, and induced widespread genomic shifts away from self-maintenance processes in the brain and body (e.g. immune function), while enhancing expression of spermatogenesis-related genes in the testes. Network analyses show that these changes were coordinated by tissue-specific synthesis and processing of neurotransmitters, not by systemic changes in testosterone, as is often thought to be the case. These results not only demonstrate how genomic changes throughout the brain and body contribute to organismal plasticity, but they also shed light on the complex interplay among tissues that together prime an animal for social instability.
