Urinary chemosignals from mice (Mus musculus): acceleration and delay of puberty in related and unrelated young females.

A series of five experiments was carried out to determine the possible differential effects that urinary chemosignals from genetically related and unrelated donors have on puberty onset in female mice. The first four experiments, with a laboratory mouse strain, demonstrated no differential acceleration or delay of sexual maturation, with respect to a close genetic relation between donors and recipients, due to the chemosignals from estrous, diestrous, pregnant, or lactating females or grouped females. In the last experiment, wild stock Mus were used; all of the results were comparable to those found in laboratory stocks. There were no instances of differential acceleration or delay based on close genetic relatedness of donors and recipients. The results conform with a general hypothesis that the urinary chemosignals in mice communicate information about the adequacy of reproductive conditions to conspecifics.