Social status in social animals, including humans, is considered a major determinant of overall health and susceptibility to disease. There is considerable evidence that these effects extend to the standing immune profile and that social status directly influences susceptibility to pathogens. However, the mechanistic underpinnings that link infectious disease and social status remain difficult to disentangle from associated factors. Here we examined the association between dominance status in male wild-derived house mice (Mus musculus) and susceptibility to Friend virus complex in the context of semi-natural populations with high male-male competition and no predation. These enclosures resemble house mouse environments, which have been associated with human architecture since the dawn of agriculture. Such conditions were achieved with large indoor enclosures designed to allow remote monitoring and to encourage mice to compete over optimal territories. Due to an interruption in our facility’s heating system, we were unexpectedly presented with the opportunity to assess how reduced temperature influences the association of social status and pathogen susceptibility. We found that pathogen virulence and reproduction were significantly lower in socially dominant hosts compared to non-dominant hosts. Interestingly, when temperature was reduced dominant and non-dominant males experienced similar levels of virulence and viral reproduction. While several hypotheses are considered, these insights may illuminate a new method of experimental manipulation to modify competitive intensity. If confirmed, future experiments may help elucidate the mechanistic underpinnings between social status and disease in the best studied and economical mammalian model available to science.

See preprint methods for methological details beyond the useage notes below.

Below is a discription of each column header. This discribes to all factors included or exclude in the analysis of FVC virolence and its association to male social status in house mice in the paper titled: "Male mouse social status is associated with Friend virus virulence and reproduction in semi-natural populations".

id - is a unique identifier of each mouse in our colony and this data set

pit - the last 4 or 5 digits of the passive integrated transponder tag used to assign dominance. These tags were extracted at dissection, cleaned and re-loaded, thus are not unique and used up to 3 times each

pen - six pen ids that correspond to the six replicate enclosures. This column is redundant with "replicateName" below.

tempFactor - our facility experienced a disruption in the HVAC system during two of these replicates. This factors specifies which mice were under cool or warm conditions.

sex - All animals included are male.

birthDate - birth date of each animal. 

ageAtEntry - the dration between birth date and entry date provides the age of each animal at enclosure entry.

birthCage - generation corresponds to the letter and mother father pairs to the numbers. Two brothers were selcted among litters and split among two replicates. Some of these cages provided a second litter in a future replicate.

litterNumber - 47 litter IDs

infectionType - all animals were infected with Friend virus complex

replicateName - six numarical ids that correspond to the six replicate enclosures. This column is redundant with "pen" above.

entryMass - body mass in grams of the animal immediately prior to release it respective enclosures

infectionMass - body mass in grams of the animal at infection, 12 full days affer entry.

deadMass - body mass in grams of the animal at euthanasia (day 25), after 12 days of infection, 24 full days after entry.

deadDate - date animal was euthanized or found dead.

deathCondition - Whether or not the early death was confirmed to be associated witha a spleen rupture. Blank indicates euthanasia at experiments end.

daysInfected - days until event (death) since the animal was infected (used for survivorship analysis).

entryDate - date of enclosure release.

infectionDate - date of capture infection and re-release

socialCondition - dominance status prior to infection as measured by >80% pittag occupancy atleast the three weeks prior.

FV_load - proviral load of the FMuLV genome per host genome out of cells from homogenized infected spleens

SFFV_load - proviral load of the SFFV genome per host genome out of cells from homogenized infected spleens

spleenMass - the absolute mass of the animal's whole blood laden spleen at dissection