How does the brain change when animals, including ourselves, become parents?
We know specific hormones fluctuate to drive changes in behavior necessary for keeping offspring alive, but is this the whole picture? What haven’t we discovered that may play a role in such a momentous event necessary for the survival of many species?
To answer these questions, Dr. Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez (University of California, Davis) and Dr. Matthew MacManes (University of New Hampshire) and their research groups are teaming up to explore how gene expression in the brain and body change as animals transition into parenthood. To do this, they are using high-throughput sequencing technology to map the relationship of genetic changes to parental care behaviors, yielding one of the most in-depth looks at the neurobiology of parental care, from “genome to phenome”.
Their subject for this study is the illustrious rock dove (Columba livia), or more commonly known as the pigeon. Like most birds, rock doves incubate eggs but are also unique in that they ‘lactate’ to feed their young, showing stereotypical avian and mammalian parental behaviors. This makes doves a potentially powerful theoretical bridge to understand the neurobiology of how the brain transitions to engage in both avian and mammalian parenting.
Calisi Rodríguez and MacManes are currently generating large genomic datasets and identifying critical genes involved in important stages of parental care. The information they are generating can have broad potential applications for use by scientists in various fields, including the management of captive breeding for conservation or agricultural purposes, and for understanding and potentially treating neural deficiencies in parent-offspring bonding. As they generate this info, they will post it openly to be assessed freely by the scientific and medical community.
This website has been created for this purpose as well as to keep those interested up to date on the publications of our collaboration, research presentations, and other exciting news and discoveries associated with this project.