AJP - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, Vol 250, Issue 3 370-R376, Copyright © 1986 by American Physiological Society
Food restriction and reproductive development: male and female mice and male rats
G. D. Hamilton and F. H. Bronson
The effect of food restriction on reproductive development was compared in
male and female mice. This was accomplished using an experimental design
that allowed us to assess the amount of reproductive development that could
occur in the total absence of body growth, when growth was stopped at each
of three different body weights. Our results demonstrate that reproductive
development has much more inertia in males than in females. Specifically,
the final stages of reproductive development can proceed largely
independently of body growth in males but not in females. This same design
was also employed in an abbreviated study of male rats. When its results
are coupled with the existing literature for female rats, it appears as
though the sex differences noted above are characteristic of both species.
