Sex differences in vocal communication of freely interacting adult mice depend upon behavioral context.

Abstract

Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are believed to play a critical role in mouse communication. Although mice produce USVs in multiple contexts, signals emitted in reproductive contexts are typically attributed solely to the male mouse. Only recently has evidence emerged showing that female mice are also vocally active during mixed-sex interactions. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically quantify and compare vocalizations emitted by female and male mice as the animals freely interacted. Using an eight-channel microphone array to determine which mouse emitted specific vocalizations during unrestrained social interaction, we recorded 13 mixed-sex pairs of mice. We report here that females vocalized significantly less often than males during dyadic interactions, with females accounting for approximately one sixth of all emitted signals. Moreover, the acoustic features of female and male signals differed. We found that the bandwidths (i.e., the range of frequencies that a signal spanned) of female-emitted signals were smaller than signals produced by males. When examining how the frequency of each signal changed over time, the slopes of male-emitted signals decreased more rapidly than female signals. Further, we revealed notable differences between male and female vocal signals when the animals were performing the same behaviors. Our study provides evidence that a female mouse does in fact vocalize during interactions with a male and that the acoustic features of female and male vocalizations differ during specific behavioral contexts.