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Abstract

Influence of androgen receptor variation in primate and carnivore female social dominance

Abstract

Female social dominance over males is a rare social behavior within mammals, found only in the Primates and Carnivora. Dominance behaviors are correlated with androgen levels. Androgen hormones act by binding to androgen receptors (AR), which upon binding function as a transcription factor initiating a cascade of events. In mammals, the AR gene exhibits extensive variation within the first exon, characterized by variable length CAG repeats. AR expression in vitro is inversely related to the number of CAG repeats. Human males with many repeats suffer androgen insensitivity when androgens fall with age. Since females produce less androgen than males, a possible mechanism to increase androgen effects is by increasing the receptor availability. This can be accomplished by reducing the number of the AR CAG repeats. Thus, short AR repeats may act as a proximate mechanism contributing to female dominance. To test this hypothesis, publically available AR sequences for 24 species (15 primates, 9 carnivores) are analyzed for repeat length. Social behavior data comes from the literature. Within each order, female-dominant species Crocuta crocuta (spotted hyena), Lemur catta (ringtail lemur) and Propithecus verreauxi (sifaka) exhibit significantly shorter repeat lengths than related species. This suggests that AR repeat length contributes to a female-dominant phenotype, though a short repeat length alone would not be predictive of such a complex phenotype. Future research will examine more species to explore the correlates of CAG repeat length and social dominance at both within and between sex levels of analysis.

Full Citation

Pfister, L.-A., L.T. Nash, M.S. Rosenberg, and A.C. Stone (2009) Influence of androgen receptor variation in primate and carnivore female social dominance. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138(S48):210.

DOI

10.1002/ajpa.21030

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