Vázquez Torres, MateoOrtiz Leal, IreneRodríguez Villamayor, PaulaFerreiro, AndreaRois, José LuísSánchez Quinteiro, Pablo2024-11-262024-11-262020-08Torres, M.V., Ortiz-Leal, I., Villamayor, P.R. et al. The vomeronasal system of the newborn capybara: a morphological and immunohistochemical study. Sci Rep 10, 13304 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69994-w2045-2322https://hdl.handle.net/10347/37862The authors thank MARCELLE NATURE PARK (Outeiro de Rei, Spain) for providing the animals employed in this studyThe vomeronasal system (VNS) is responsible for the perception mainly of pheromones and kairomones. Primarily studied in laboratory rodents, it plays a crucial role in their socio-sexual behaviour. As a wild rodent, the capybara offers a more objective and representative perspective to understand the significance of the system in the Rodentia, avoiding the risk of extrapolating from laboratory rodent strains, exposed to high levels of artificial selection pressure. We have studied the main morphological and immunohistochemical features of the capybara vomeronasal organ (VNO) and accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). The study was done in newborn individuals to investigate the maturity of the system at this early stage. We used techniques such as histological stains, lectins-labelling and immunohistochemical characterization of a range of proteins, including G proteins (Gαi2, Gαo) and olfactory marking protein. As a result, we conclude that the VNS of the capybara at birth is capable of establishing the same function as that of the adult, and that it presents unique features as the high degree of differentiation of the AOB and the active cellular migration in the vomeronasal epithelium. All together makes the capybara a promising model for the study of chemical communication in the first days of lifeeng© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Development of the nervous systemImmunohistochemicalCapybaraVomeronasaljournal article10.1038/S41598-020-69994-Wopen access