Although pair bonding is the preferred mating tactic among socially monogamous prairie voles, naturalistic observations have demonstrated many males remain non-bonded. Moreover, although males readily re-bond after the loss of a partner, females do not (i.e., the “widow effect’). Few studies have attempted to address why so many males remain non-bonded or if a reluctance of re-bonding in females contributes to this outcome. We investigate how female bonding history impacts male pair bond formation. Specifically, we test two alternative hypotheses for how sexually naïve males will behave when paired with widow females. The fecundity hypothesis predicts males will avoid bonding with widow females and be more receptive to novel bond-naïve females. The preference to bond hypothesis predicts males will choose to bond and express a partner preference, irrespective of if a pair-mate is a widow or sexually naïve. Our results demonstrated that males expressed a partner preference for females regardless of their social history. These data support the preference to bond hypothesis and suggest natural variation in bonding may not be strongly due to males forgoing bonding opportunities.

尽管配对是一夫一妻制的草原田鼠首选的交配策略，但自然观察表明许多雄性仍然没有结合。此外，尽管雄性在失去伴侣后很容易重新建立联系，但雌性则不然（即“寡妇效应”）。很少有研究试图解释为什么如此多的男性仍然没有建立联系，或者女性不愿重新建立联系是否会导致这一结果。我们研究女性关系历史如何影响男性配对关系的形成。具体来说，我们测试了两种替代假设，看看性幼稚的雄性与寡妇雌性配对时会如何表现。繁殖力假说预测，雄性会避免与寡妇建立联系，而更容易接受新的、未曾建立过联系的雌性。对关系偏好的假说预测，男性会选择建立关系并表达对伴侣的偏好，无论伴侣是寡妇还是性幼稚。我们的结果表明，男性对女性表现出伴侣偏好，无论她们的社会历史如何。这些数据支持了对亲密关系假设的偏好，并表明亲密关系的自然变化可能并不是由于男性放弃亲密关系机会而造成的。