The
details of how mice burrow appear to be driven by genetics and not through
learning, researchers report.
Biology
has spent enormous effort in determining how genes affect physical traits, but
little is known about how they affect structures animals make, such as bees'
hives and beavers' dams.
Researchers
reporting in Nature crossed
mouse breeds and measured the burrows the resulting mice made.
The
study has behavoural implications of many animals, including humans.
"Modular"
genetic regions even relate to specific burrow parts, it suggests.
The
findings bear out an idea first put forward by British evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins, called "the extended phenotype".
It
suggests that our view of genes as controlling only proteins in an individual
is tremendously limited, and that genes "express" themselves in a
rich variety of behaviours - or in this case, homes.
The
study's key subjects were more than 300 oilfield mice (Peromyscus polionotus),
which are known to make burrows into the ground toward a nest, and then an
"escape route" from the nest to just below the surface, which they
can break through easily in the case of danger.
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