Social Status Transitions

Subdominant male mice are able to rapidly respond to the emergence of power vacuums. When an alpha male is removed from a hierarchy, subdominant males rapidly (within 3 minutes) recognize that there exists a social opportunity and they aggressively exert their own dominance over all other animals in the group (see Williamson et al 2017 ). These males socially ascend to become the new alpha males and are able to stay at the top of the hierarchy. This demonstrates great social competence on behalf of these males to be able to so quickly respond to a change in the social context of the group. We have also found that this change in social context leads to changes in neural gene expression and activity. When the alpha male is removed, we observe that subdominant and subordinate males show increased GnRH mRNA expression compared to when the alpha male has not been removed.