Naked Mole-Rat Social Phenotypes Vary in Investigative and Aggressive Behavior in a Laboratory Partner Preference Paradigm
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Here we employed the partner preference test (PPT) to examine how naked mole-rat non-breeding individuals of different behavioral phenotypes make social decisions. Naked mole-rats from six colonies were classified into three behavioral phenotypes (soldiers, dispersers, and workers) using a battery of behavioral tests. They then participated in a 3 h long PPT, where they could freely interact with a tethered familiar or tethered unfamiliar conspecific. By comparing the three behavioral phenotypes, we tested the hypothesis that the PPT can be used to interrogate social decision-making in this species, revealing individual differences in behavior that are consistent with discrete social phenotypes. We also tested whether a shorter, 10 min version of the paradigm is sufficient to capture group differences in behavior. Overall, soldiers had higher aggression scores toward unfamiliar conspecifics than both workers and dispersers at the 10 min and 3 h comparison times. At the 10 min comparison time, workers showed a stronger preference for the familiar animal’s chamber, as well as for investigating the familiar conspecific, compared to both dispersers and soldiers. At the 3 h time point, no phenotype differences were seen with chamber or investigation preference scores. Overall, all phenotypes spent more time in chambers with another animal vs. being alone. Use of the PPT in a comparative context has demonstrated that the test identifies species and group differences in affiliative and aggressive behavior toward familiar and unfamiliar animals, revealing individual differences in social decision-making and, importantly, capturing aspects of species-specific social organization seen in nature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".