Sex-specific relationships between stress coping and avoidance behavior

Abstract While the experience of stress is ubiquitous, the risk of developing stress-linked conditions such as anxiety and depression is related to maladaptive stress responses. In order to probe the relationship between stress coping, sex, and stress-linked behavioral outcomes, we exposed male and female mice to subchronic variable stress (SCVS) and measured the correlation between coping during the tail suspension stressors (TSS) of SCVS and avoidance behavior in the EPM. We found that females engage in more active coping, and there were no sex differences in avoidance or locomotor behavior in the EPM after stress. However, we found that greater active coping predicted greater avoidance in females, but less avoidance in males. The results demonstrate that coping strategies are dynamic across time in males and females, but the relationships between avoidance and coping strategy dynamics are sex-biased. Plain English Summary The selection of stress coping strategies is an important component of the stress response that can impact behavior after stress. Stress coping strategies and behavior after stress can both be sex-biased, but the relationships between them are unclear. SCVS is a paradigm that is used to study sex differences in behavior and physiology because females are specifically vulnerable to SCVS. We recorded behavior during two stressors in the SCVS paradigm and found opposite relationships between coping behavior and avoidance behavior after stress in males and females, even though males and females exhibit similar dynamics in coping behavior and similar avoidance behavior after stress. These results demonstrate that sex is an important variable in the relationship between coping strategies during stress and behavior after stress.