| Title: | Female scent accelerates growth of juvenile male mice |
| Author(s): | Zala SM; Church B; Potts WK; Knauer F; Penn DJ; |
| Address: | "Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Savoyenstrasse 1a, 1160, Vienna, Austria. sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 S. 1400 E., Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA. sarah.zala@vetmeduni.ac.at. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 S. 1400 E., Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA. Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, 1160, Vienna, Austria. Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Savoyenstrasse 1a, 1160, Vienna, Austria" |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-023-34548-3 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 2045-2322 (Electronic) 2045-2322 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Exposing female house mice (Mus musculus) to male urinary scent accelerates their sexual development (Vandenbergh effect). Here, we tested whether exposing juvenile male mice to females' urine similarly influences male growth and size of their sexual organs. We exposed three-week old male house mice to female urine or water (control) for ca. three months. We found that female-exposed males grew significantly faster and gained more body mass than controls, despite all males being reared on a controlled diet, but we detected no differences in males' muscle mass or sexual organs. In contrast, exposing juvenile males to male urine had no effect their growth. We tested whether the males' accelerated growth imposed functional trade-offs on males' immune resistance to an experimental infection. We challenged the same male subjects with an avirulent bacterial pathogen (Salmonella enterica), but found no evidence that faster growth impacted their bacterial clearance, body mass or survival during infection compared to controls. Our results provide the first evidence to our knowledge that juvenile male mice accelerate their growth when exposed to the urine of adult females, though we found no evidence that increased growth had negative trade-offs on immune resistance to infectious disease" |
| Keywords: | Mice Animals Male Female *Odorants *Body Fluids Pheromones Sexual Development; |
| Notes: | "MedlineZala, Sarah M Church, Brian Potts, Wayne K Knauer, Felix Penn, Dustin J eng Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. England 2023/05/06 Sci Rep. 2023 May 5; 13(1):7371. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-34548-3" |
