Could pair bonding, paternal care of pups, or other social behaviors in prairie voles offer an environmental behavioral context for exploring the importance of GXE on alcoholism? One recent study suggests that this might be possible. Bosch et al. allowed male and female prairie voles to pair bond for several days, during which time they presumably copulated and entered the post-copulatory period (after the first 24-72 hr of exposure), although mating was not recorded. Some pairs were then separated. Separated animals showed longer durations of floating in the forced swim test, and increased durations of “passive stress-coping” (i.e., hanging without struggling) in the tail suspension test but showed no differences from controls in the elevated plus maze (Bosch et al., 2009). Further studies in this well-controlled experiment implicated the CRF-1 receptor in these behavioral changes. Thus, the pair bonding behavior appears to be amenable to experimental manipulation.
