Female mouse maturation: relative importance of social factors and daylength

Abstract

The present experiment utilized a cross classified design to test the interactions and relative importance of male presence or absence, female density and 3 different photoperiods as factors affecting puberty in female house mice. First, vaginal estrus was used as the criterion for sexual maturity. All 3 factors significantly affected the timing of first estrus; male presence or absence accounted for 31% of the total variation in age at maturity, 9% of the variance was attributable to the female density factor and 6% to the differences in daylength treatments. There were no significant interactions among the treatment variables.