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Communal Nesting and Nursing in Mice buffalowings321 Dams, mothers, nest together in order to raise their offspring, and have come to follow communal nesting as a means of efficiently raising their young.-I do not really understand this sentence. By communally nursing-you said nesting. That does not imply nursing., parents are able to care for their young with less effort due to the fact that the responsibility of caring for the children is divided amongst the mothers.-Basically what you are saying is this: It has been observed that female mice nest together as well as nurse each others young. The advantage is likely less stress on the mothers as the responsibility of raising the young is now shared. Simplify. Just say what you want to say without all the extra words to make it confusing. You need to transition into this sentence. Tell the story…Scientists were interested in figuring out…tell a seamless story. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a large genomic region found on chromosome 6 that produces proteins on the surfaces of cells which function during immune recognition.-my grandma is getting dizzy!! Are you forgetting about the reader?? Yet MHC has a different profound effect on living beings such as mice, it helps distinguish kin and thus allows for mice to nest with those mice that have similar MHC-genes and not to mate with those mice that have similar genes (Penn & Potts, 1999).Grandma, grandma, are you OK! I need to stop here and help grandma back on her feet and you need to make this clear to the general reader so that what happened to grandma does not happen to anyone else. Relate this to what people already know. Be creative. It controls the mice’s lifestyle from the process of birth to mating and even to raising pups of their own. MHC not only benefits the survival of the young but it plays a role in identifying each mouse genetically. The MHC gene controls a large part of the mice’s life and makes communal nesting a process that allows for optimal conditions needed for survival. Nesting with MHC-similar mice has become built into each mouse. It not only benefits their family but also their kin and increases inclusive fitness, the survival of kin. MHC-similar mice also choose not to mate together in order to ensure genetic diversity (Manning, Potts, & Wakeland, 1991). However their survival also serves as two major requirements of identifying genetics based on kin recognition (Manning, Potts, & Wakeland, 1992). MHC is distinguished from mouse to mouse through a form of physical discrimination based on each form of the MHC gene, which creates unique scents. The genes, allowing for these preferences in kin recognition to be made, can be identified by individual odors. The female partners that nest together share allelic forms of MHC. The genotypes, the genetic makeup of an organism, and the haplotypes, a combination of alleles that are transmitted together on a chromosome, affect the process of choosing nesting partners. Different forms of genes characterize each individual, and genes that are closely placed together tend to be inherited together. The MHC gene is of unprecedented genetic diversity making it useful in the resolution of genetic relationships. They play roles in determining a dam’s best choice of communal nesting partners, since females try their best to live with kin. Nesting patterns are of crucial importance to the raising and caring of young mice, otherwise known as pups. Some pups are prone to infanticide at birth due to the tendency of some territorial males to kill those pups that are not from his territory (Dewsbury, Manning, Potts, & Wakeland, 1995). This already reduces the number of pups in a nest and in order to benefit the survival of the remaining pups, it is in the interest of the dams, the mothers, to communally nest. Communal nesting diminishes the necessity of wasting time and energy on the parents’ side. However communal nursing is the responsibility that the female parents must share, a process that involves the care of each individual pup. (Saylor & Salmon, 1971) The pups must be indiscriminately provided for, nurtured with equal care, and should not be discriminated based on physical or genotypic characteristics. However it has been shown that mothers that communally nurse do discriminate against pups that are of different age or size than their own offspring. (Potts, Manning, & Wakeland, 1994) This is detrimental to the main function and purpose of a communal nest, which can cause some pups to be at a disadvantage which is ironic when communal nests are formed to create advantages for the young and their early lives. These offspring have a higher chance of survival by being the products of communal nesting yet the dams must be aware that they must care for their individual young at times. Another advantage of communally nesting is the exposure to many dams which creates many forms of immunity especially from the milk of the female mice as well as the mass of many different mice in a single area (Becker et al., 2007). Communal nesting is beneficial to mice and many other rodents as a means of raising young. The role that the MHC-gene plays is major as it distinguishes between partners for nesting and living together as well as mates with whom offspring are produced. Mating is disassortative in which mates are chosen for the benefit of the genetic diversity of the offspring, just like communal nesting is carried out to efficiently raise young (Ilmonen et al., 2007). As parents, there is a notion to live for the next generation and it is clearly visible in the lives of house mice. References: Becker, M.I., De Ioannes, A.E., León, C., & Ebensperger, L.A. (2007) Females of the communally breeding rodent, Octodon degus, transfer antibodies to their offspring during pregnancy and lactation. J Reprod Immunol, 74, 68-77. Dewsbury, D.A., Manning, C.J., Potts, W.K., & Wakeland, E.K. (1995). Communal nesting and communal nursing in house mice, Mus musculus domesticus. Animal Behaviour, 50, 741-751. Ilmonen, P., Penn, D., Damjanovich K., Morrison L., Ghotbi L., & Potts, W.K. (2007). Major histocompatibility complex heterozygosity reduces fitness in experimentally infected mice. Genetics 176, 2501-2508 Manning, C.J., Potts, W.K., & Wakeland, E.K. (1992). Communal nesting patterns in mice implicate MHC genes in kin recognition. Nature, 360, 581-583. Manning, C.J., Potts, W.K., & Wakeland, E.K. (1991).Mating patterns in seminatural populations of mice influenced by MHC genotype. Nature, 352, 619- 621 Penn, D. & Potts W.K. (1999). The evolution of MHC-disassortative mating preferences. American Naturalist, 153, 145-164. Potts, W.K., Manning C.J., & Wakeland, E.K. (1994). The role of infectious disease, inbreeding and mating preferences in maintaining MHC genetic diversity: an experimental test. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 346, 369-378 Sayler, A., & Salmon, M. (1971) An Ethological analysis of communal nursing by the house mouse (Mus musculus). Behaviour, 40, 62-85.