Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 
LaFleur, R. A., Williams-Fritze, M. J. 2020. Now hear this: Caring for chinchillas in research. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 8(5) (September/October), 8-12.

This article describes the authors’ experience with the housing, social housing, husbandry, handling, and environmental enrichment of chinchillas in laboratories.

Stevens, T., Williams, W. R. 2020. Tarps used as visual barriers decrease aggressive conflicts in baboons. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 8(5) (September/October), 72-74.

Nonhuman primate (NHP) colonies housed in research settings are manipulated frequently due to research protocols, for breeding, and for veterinary procedures. These manipulations come with maneuvering complex group dynamics that can be challenging for baboon...

Acharya, R., Rault, J.-L. 2020. Risk factors for feather-damaging behavior in companion parrots: A social media study. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 40, 43-49.

Studies on the etiology of behavioral problems often involve interference in the animal's routine or reliance on owners' self-reports like surveys. Gathering data from videos posted on social media, a technique coined ‘video mining’, offers...

Begni, V., Sanson, A., Pfeiffer, N. et al. 2020. Social isolation in rats: Effects on animal welfare and molecular markers for neuroplasticity. PLOS ONE 15(10), e0240439.

Early life stress compromises brain development and can contribute to the development of mental illnesses. A common animal model used to study different facets of psychiatric disorders is social isolation from early life on. In...

Bill, J., Rauterberg, S. L., Herbrandt, S. et al. 2020. Agonistic behavior and social hierarchy in female domestic rabbits kept in semi-groups. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 38, 21-31.

In semi-natural mixed-sex groups, rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) organize their social life by forming a hierarchy, which is characterized by linearity and stability. Compared to the natural environment, many factors are different in contemporary breeding systems...

Bodden, C., Wewer, M., Kästner, N. et al. 2021. Not all mice are alike: Mixed-strain housing alters social behaviour. Physiology & Behavior 228, 113220.

The use of millions of mice in scientific studies worldwide emphasises the continuing need for a reduction of sample sizes, however, not at the expense of scientific validity. Split-plot designs have been suggested to enhance...

Ruberto, T., Talbot, J. L., Reddon, A. R. 2020. Head up displays are a submission signal in the group-living daffodil cichlid. Behavioural Processes 181, 104271.

Dominance hierarchies can reduce conflict within social groups and agonistic signals can help to establish and maintain these hierarchies. Behaviours produced by subordinates in response to aggression are often assumed to function as signals of...

Shelton, D. S., Shelton, S. G., Daniel, D. K. et al. 2020. Collective behavior in wild zebrafish. Zebrafish 17(4), 243-252.

Anthropogenic change is expected to alter environments at alarming rates. To predict the impact of modified environments on social behavior, we must study the relationship between environmental features and collective behavior in a genetically tractable...

Theil, J. H., Ahloy-Dallaire, J., Weber, E. M. et al. 2020. The epidemiology of fighting in group-housed laboratory mice. Scientific Reports 10(1), 16649.

Injurious home-cage aggression (fighting) in mice affects both animal welfare and scientific validity. It is arguably the most common potentially preventable morbidity in mouse facilities. Existing literature on mouse aggression almost exclusively examines territorial aggression...

Borland, J. M., Kim, E., Swanson, S. P. et al. 2020. Effect of aggressive experience in female Syrian hamsters on glutamate receptor expression in the nucleus accumbens. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 14, 583395.

Our social relationships determine our health and well-being. In rodent models, there is now strong support for the rewarding properties of aggressive or assertive behaviors to be critical for the expression and development of adaptive...

Grífols, R., Zamora, C., Ortega-Saez, I. et al. 2020. Postweaning grouping as a strategy to reduce singly housed male mice. Animals 10(11), 2135.

Rearing laboratory mice in groups is important since social isolation after weaning induces brain alterations, which entails behavioral abnormalities in adulthood. Age is an important factor when grouping males of different litters due to inter-male...

Scarborough, J., Mueller, F., Arban, R. et al. 2020. Preclinical validation of the micropipette-guided drug administration (MDA) method in the maternal immune activation model of neurodevelopmental disorders. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 88, 461-470.

Pharmacological treatments in laboratory rodents remain a cornerstone of preclinical psychopharmacological research and drug development. There are numerous ways in which acute or chronic pharmacological treatments can be implemented, with each method having certain advantages...

Woodard, C. L., Nasrallah, W. B., Samiei, B. V. et al. 2020. PiDose: An open-source system for accurate and automated oral drug administration to group-housed mice. Scientific Reports 10, 11584.

Drug treatment studies in laboratory mice typically employ manual administration methods such as injection or gavage, which can be time-consuming to perform over long periods and cause substantial stress in animals. These stress responses may...

Lefebvre, E., Granon, S., Chauveau, F. 2020. Social context increases ultrasonic vocalizations during restraint in adult mice. Animal Cognition 23(2), 351–359.

Adult mice emit many ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during social interaction tasks, but only a few studies have yet reported USVs in stressed adult mice. Our aim was to study which experimental conditions favor USV emission...

Batzina, A., Drossos, I.-P., Karakatsouli, N. 2019. Effects of familiarity on individual growth and feeding behaviour of European seabass Dicentrarchus labrax. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 211, 112-117.

Available literature indicates that fish are able to recognize familiar conspecifics and that familiarity may offer important benefits (e.g. more stable social environment, improved foraging behavior, growth, survival). In the practice of intensive rearing of...

Melotti, L., Kästner, N., Eick, A. K. et al. 2019. Can live with ‘em, can live without ‘em: Pair housed male C57BL/6J mice show low aggression and increasing sociopositive interactions with age, but can adapt to single housing if separated. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 214, 79-88.

The basic question as to whether male laboratory mice should be singly or group housed represents a major animal welfare concern within current laboratory animal legislation and husbandry. To better understand the behavioural and physiological...

Arechavala-Lopez, P., Saraiva, J. L. 2019. Welfare of Cultured and Experimental Fishes. Basel, Switzerland: MDPI, 132 pages.

This open access book is a printed edition of the Special Issue on Welfare of Cultured and Experimental Fishes that was published in the journal Fishes. The PDF is free for download.

Gonçalves-de-Freitas, E., Bolognesi, M. C., dos Santos Gauy, A. C. et al. 2019. Social behavior and welfare in Nile tilapia. Fishes 4(2), 23.

Fish social behavior can be affected by artificial environments, particularly by factors that act upon species that show aggressive behavior to set social rank hierarchy. Although aggressive interactions are part of the natural behavior in...

Dal Bosco, A., Mugnai, C., Martino, M. et al. 2019. Housing rabbit does in a combi system with removable walls: Effect on behaviour and reproductive performance. Animals 9(8), 528.

We evaluated the effects of two types of colony cages, in which rabbit does were always in a group (C1), and where they were in combi cages furnished with removable internal walls to allow both...

Trocino, A., Zomeño, C., Filiou, E. et al. 2019. The use of environmental enrichments affects performance and behavior of growing rabbits housed in collective pens. Animals 9(8), 537.

This study assessed the effects of an elevated plastic-slatted platform and/or a plastic hiding tube in collective pens with large group sizes (27 or 36 rabbits/pen; 16 rabbits/m2) on the performance and welfare of rabbits...

Gerencsér, Z., Matics, Z., Szabó, R. et al. 2019. Aggressiveness, mating behaviour and lifespan of group housed rabbit does. Animals 9(10), 708.

Aggressiveness is one of the main problems in group housing of rabbit does. The aim of the experiment was to investigate the frequency of aggressiveness and mating behaviour as well as the lifespan of does...

Nip, E., Adcock, A., Nazal, B. et al. 2019. Why are enriched mice nice? Investigating how environmental enrichment reduces agonism in female C57BL/6, DBA/2, and BALB/c mice. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 217, 73-82.

Compared to female mice raised in large, environmentally enriched (EE) cages, those from “shoebox” non-enriched (NE) cages demonstrate more stereotypic behaviour (SB) and depressive-like effects (i.e. learned helplessness; and inactive-but-awake behaviour [IBA], where a mouse...

Brajon, S., Morello, G. M., Teixeira, M. S. et al. 2019. Social environment as a cause of litter loss in laboratory mouse: A behavioural study. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 218, 104827.

Perinatal mortality is a widespread problem in laboratory mouse breeding and is often manifested by the loss of the entire litter within the first days of life. High mortality is an animal health and welfare...

Liang, F., Yang, S., Zhang, Y. et al. 2019. Social housing promotes cognitive function through enhancing synaptic plasticity in APP/PS1 mice. Behavioural Brain Research 368, 111910.

Previous studies have shown that loneliness increases the risk of AD (Alzheimer’s disease) onset, while active and frequent social housing delays the onset of cognitive impairment. The mechanism of how this occurs remains unclear. In...

Velkey, A. J., Boles, J., Betts, T. K. et al. 2019. High fidelity: Assessing zebrafish (Danio rerio) responses to social stimuli across several levels of realism. Behavioural Processes 164, 100-108.

Behavioral assays of zebrafish shoaling have recently been employed to investigate social behavior in zebrafish models of psychiatric disease. Many studies have developed simulated models of conspecifics to serve as alternatives to live shoals in...