| Title: | Female mouse maturation: effects of excreted and bladder urine from juvenile and adult males |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 0012-1630 (Print) 0012-1630 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | A sequence of 4 experiments examined the effects of prepubertal and adult males on the sexual maturation of young female house mice. The results support 3 conclusions: (1) the presence of a prepubertal male or of urine from prepubertal males does not affect the timing of sexual maturation in young female house mice; (2) the maturation-accelerating pheromone produced by adult males is present in the bladder urine of intact adult males but is absent from both excreted and bladder urine of castrated males; and (3) young females caged with 7 prepubertal males or with a castrated adult male mature earlier than control females caged alone. Results indicating that the presence of a castrated male leads to earlier sexual maturation of young female mice differ from previous findings. A possible explanation for this contradictory result is based on the ability of young weanling female mice to acclimatize the thermoregulate when separated from the dam and litter-mates. A model for density-feedback population regulation in house mice involving pheromones produced by males and females is presented |
| Keywords: | Age Factors Animals Castration Crowding Female Male Mice Organ Size Pheromones/metabolism/*pharmacology Seminal Vesicles/anatomy & histology *Sexual Maturation Social Environment Social Isolation Testis/anatomy & histology Testosterone/pharmacology Urinat; |
| Notes: | "MedlineDrickamer, L C Murphy, R X Jr eng Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. 1978/01/01 Dev Psychobiol. 1978 Jan; 11(1):63-72. doi: 10.1002/dev.420110110" |
