Food restriction and reproductive development: male and female mice and male rats

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.