Modest effects of light on the temporal dynamics of mouse social behaviors

Animals rely on sensory perception to initiate and execute a wide range of behaviors. In social interactions, house mice primarily depend on olfactory and auditory cues, whereas the contribution of visual input remains less well understood. To address this gap, we systematically examined the impact of lighting on social interactions using a same-sex resident-intruder assay in male and female mice. Behaviors were categorized into self-behavior, social investigation, allogrooming, aggression (males), and mounting (females), and were analyzed in terms of total duration, frequency, latency, temporal dynamics, behavioral transitions, and variability. Across sexes, we found no significant differences in overall behavioral composition or variability between light and dark conditions. Although some behavioral transitions differed between conditions, none remained significant after multiple-comparison correction. Nevertheless, temporal analyses revealed subtle lighting-dependent patterns, with certain behaviors exhibiting time-dependent changes that reached statistical significance only under specific illumination conditions. These findings suggest that under the conditions tested, visual cues were not found to substantially alter the overall repertoire of social behaviors, but may modulate their temporal organization. Together, our results indicate that vision may function as a modulatory cue that influences when specific behaviors are expressed, highlighting the importance of temporal dynamics in behavioral analysis.