Postpartum resource scarcity reshapes maternal care, offspring prioritization, and the steroid-sensitive medial preoptic area
Parental care requires balancing offspring needs with environmental constraints, yet how resource scarcity alters the organization of maternal responses remains poorly understood. Here, we examined maternal behavior, offspring prioritization, and steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix organization in postpartum rats exposed to limited bedding and nesting (LBN) or control conditions with ample nesting materials. LBN increased pup-directed and reduced self-directed behaviors but also increased behavioral entropy, a measure of behavioral fragmentation, indicating less predictable caregiving sequences. LBN dams preferentially retrieved male pups first, whereas control dams preferentially retrieved females first. LBN also increased the proportion of pup-investigation time directed toward males compared with controls. In offspring on postnatal day 10, corticosterone was elevated in female but not male LBN pups, a pattern that paralleled the maternal male bias. To identify associated neurobiological changes, we assessed steroid receptors and extracellular matrix organization in the medial preoptic area (mPOA), a key region for maternal behavior. LBN increased numbers of estrogen receptor (ER)- and androgen receptor (AR)-immunoreactive cells, reduced perineuronal net (PNN) abundance, and decreased receptor-positive cell enwrapment. Because PNNs constrain structural plasticity, these findings suggest that the postpartum environment alters the organization of steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix, potentially modulating experience-dependent plasticity in neurosteroid-sensitive circuits. In sum, LBN increases the levels of maternal engagement while reshaping its temporal organization and allocation, accompanied by selective remodeling of steroid-sensitive preoptic architecture. Therefore, maternal adaptation to adversity may be better understood as changes in caregiving allocation strategies rather than a simple gain or loss of maternal care.