History of winning and hierarchy landscape influence stress susceptibility in mice

  1. Katherine B LeClair
  2. Kenny L Chan
  3. Manuella P Kaster
  4. Lyonna F Parise
  5. Charles Joseph Burnett
  6. Scott Russo  Is a corresponding author
  1. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
  2. Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil

Abstract

Social hierarchy formation is strongly evolutionarily conserved. Across species, rank within social hierarchy has large effects on health and behavior. To investigate the relationship between social rank and stress susceptibility, we exposed ranked male and female mice to social and non-social stressors and manipulated social hierarchy position. We found that rank predicts same sex social stress outcomes: dominance in males and females confers resilience while subordination confers susceptibility. Pre-existing rank does not predict non-social stress outcomes in females and weakly does so in males, but rank emerging under stress conditions reveals social interaction deficits in male and female subordinates. Both history of winning and rank of cage mates affect stress susceptibility in males: rising to the top rank through high mobility confers resilience and mice that lose dominance lose stress resilience, though gaining dominance over a subordinate animal does not confer resilience. Overall, we have demonstrated a relationship between social status and stress susceptibility, particularly when taking into account individual history of winning and the overall hierarchy landscape in male and female mice.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Katherine B LeClair

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Kenny L Chan

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Manuella P Kaster

    Federal University of Santa Catarina, Santa Catarina, Brazil
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Lyonna F Parise

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Charles Joseph Burnett

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Scott Russo

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    scott.russo@mssm.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6470-1805

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01MH114882)

  • Scott Russo

National Institutes of Health (R01MH127820)

  • Scott Russo

National Institutes of Health (R01MH104559)

  • Scott Russo

CAPES-Brazil (Visiting Researcher Fellowship)

  • Manuella P Kaster

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Postdoctoral Fellowship,201811MFE-414896-231226)

  • Kenny L Chan

Leon Levy Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship)

  • Lyonna F Parise

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Rebecca Shansky, Northeastern University, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal procedures were approved by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiInstitutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol #: LA10-00266 to S.J.R.)

Version history

  1. Received: June 18, 2021
  2. Preprint posted: July 7, 2021 (view preprint)
  3. Accepted: September 27, 2021
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: September 28, 2021 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: October 7, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2021, LeClair et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Katherine B LeClair
  2. Kenny L Chan
  3. Manuella P Kaster
  4. Lyonna F Parise
  5. Charles Joseph Burnett
  6. Scott Russo
(2021)
History of winning and hierarchy landscape influence stress susceptibility in mice
eLife 10:e71401.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71401

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71401

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