The development of sexual behavior in the rat: Role of preadult nutrition and environmental conditions

✍ Scribed by Stefan Hansen; Knut Larsson; Sven G. Carlsson; Patrick Sourander

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 629 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0012-1630
• DOI: 10.1002/dev.420110109

✦ Synopsis

Rats were subjected to pre-and postnatal undernutrition by restricting the food intake of their mothers (U); another group of rats was normally fed (N). Each nutrition group was divided into 3 subgroups by varying the degree of environmental stimulation: animals in the Max group were stimulated by handling and enriched rearing conditions; the Min group rats were subjected to social isolation; rats in the control condition (C) were raised under ordinary laboratory conditions. The onset of sexual activity was not affected in the U-C male rats, but was delayed in both U-Min and N-Min rats. Although no difference existed in the age of puberty between the N-Max and N-C animals, the U-Max rats displayed an advancement of puberty by 7 days in comparison to the U-C rats. Undernutrition did not affect female sexual maturation; however the Max condition delayed this process in both nutrition groups.

Research on the effects of early undernutrition has established that undernutrition during discrete periods in infancy may permanently affect various adult behavior patterns (see Levitsky & Barnes, 1973 for a review), as well as the development of the nervous system (see Sourander, Sima, & Haltia, 1974 for a review). In the present investigation the effect of early undernutrition upon sexual development was studied in the rat. Previous studies have established that undernutrition during ontogeny affects reproductive physiology and behavior in this species (Asdell