Marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) have been increasingly used in biomedical research, but commercial vendors have been struggling to provide enough animals for large projects. Many laboratories have therefore resorted to breeding animals to create their own colonies. However, breeding can be rather difficult and time-consuming, with female marmosets failing to reproduce efficiently. The current system involves creating random male/female breeding pairs, which tend to take a long time to successfully reproduce; paired couples can also be incompatible due to fighting or aggression. In a recent preprint (not peer-reviewed), Drazan et al. present a protocol that allows female captive marmosets to choose their partner. The novel partner preference test, or ‘love maze’, presents the female with two potential male candidates at a time and allows the researchers to observe her behavior towards the two males identifying which ones she prefers. Repeating the process with the chosen male multiple times and presenting new male options every time assures that the female has a clear preference for this partner. This approach successfully decreased the latency to conceive to around half of the time required with random pairing and increased reproductive success by around 2.5-fold. This simple partner preference protocol can provide a time-efficient way for planning breeding in marmoset colonies, achieving appropriate sample sizes for experiments.

Original reference: Drazan, T.M. et al. preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.08.593247 (2024)

狨猴（ Callithrix jacchus ）越来越多地用于生物医学研究，但商业供应商一直在努力为大型项目提供足够的动物。因此，许多实验室通过培育动物来创建自己的群体。然而，繁殖可能相当困难且耗时，雌性狨猴无法有效繁殖。目前的系统涉及随机创建雄性/雌性繁殖对，这往往需要很长时间才能成功繁殖；配对的情侣也可能因打斗或攻击而变得不相容。在最近的预印本（未经同行评审）中，Drazan 等人。提出一个允许雌性圈养狨猴选择伴侣的协议。这种新颖的伴侣偏好测试或“爱情迷宫”，一次向女性展示两名潜在的男性候选人，并允许研究人员观察她对两名男性的行为，以确定她更喜欢哪一个。对选定的雄性重复多次这个过程，并每次都提出新的雄性选择，以确保雌性对该伴侣有明确的偏好。这种方法成功地将受孕潜伏期缩短至随机配对所需时间的一半左右，并将繁殖成功率提高了约 2.5 倍。这种简单的伙伴偏好协议可以为规划狨猴群体的繁殖提供一种省时的方法，从而获得适当的实验样本量。

Original reference: Drazan, T.M. et al. preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.08.593247 (2024)