Female BALB/c Mice Prefer the Odor of Mates Producing Fewer Progeny

Mate choice is the very important part of sexual selection.It is known that free mate choice is to provide the most viableoffspring are born. Researches on different animal species foundthat viability from introduction to sexual maturity is significantlyhigher in individuals born in crossbreeding in accordance with freebehavioral mate choice, compared to that in crossbreeding againstthe mate choice. Making the choice, the female may rely on visual,vocal or olfactory signals of male. Most of experiments evaluatingsexual choice allowing interactions with the animal, making it impossibleto determine the specific contribution of each separate signal.Odor play a crucial role in intraspecific communication in rodents.Individuals are able to recognize sex, reproductive status, genotype,and diet and health condition conspecifics by odor. However, veryfew articles unite olfactory signals from the male to informationabout his paternal effects. In our research, we mated a male withtwo females. The number of live embryos, their weight and the weightof fetal placentas evaluated reproductive success of males. Naivefemales in olfactory tests then evaluated the volatile urine fractionof the males. Male urine samples were also analyzed using chromatography-massspectrometry analysis. In result, the naive BALB/c females prefermales with low number of fetus in the litter compared to males withhigh number of fetus in the litter. Instrumental method of analysisapproved the opportunity to differentiate between the groups ofmales. Other pregnancy parameters did not affect naive females’preference for male urine samples.