BACKGROUND Sexual imprinting is important for kin recognition and for promoting outbreeding, and has been a driving force for evolution; however, little is known about sexual imprinting by auditory cues in mammals. Male mice emit song-like ultrasonic vocalizations that possess strain-specific characteristics. OBJECTIVES In this study, we asked whether female mice imprint and prefer specific c...

A majority of birds are socially monogamous, providing exceptional opportunities to discover neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying preferences for opposite-sex partners where the sexes form extended affiliative relationships. Zebra finches have been the focus of the most systematic program of research to date in any socially monogamous animal. In this species, sexual partner preference can be pa...

Recent theoretical work has shown that sexual selection may cause speciation under a much wider range of conditions than previously supposed. There are, however, no empirical studies capable of simultaneously evaluating several key predictions that contrast this with other speciation models. We present data on male pulse rates and female phonotactic responses to pulse rates for the field cricke...

A deficit in brain serotonin is thought to be associated with deteriorated stress coping behaviour, affective disorders and exaggerated violence. We challenged this hypothesis in mice with a brain-specific serotonin depletion caused by a tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) deficiency. We tested TPH2-deficient (Tph2(-/-)) animals in two social situations. As juveniles, Tph2(-/-) mice displayed reduc...

Sexual selection theory proposes correlated evolutionary changes in mating preferences and secondary sexual characters based on a positive genetic correlation between preference and the preferred trait. Empirical work has provided support for a genetic covariation between female preference and male attractiveness in several taxa. Here, we study parent and offspring visual traits in threespine s...

INTRODUCTION Ever since the idea was first espoused by Darwin in his classic The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex [Darwin, 1871], the evolutionary importance of sexual selection has been documented within a multitude of species. Comparatively few studies, however, have focused on the impact of sexual selection on populations of naturally occurring hybrid animals, or hybrid zones,...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effects produced by electroacupuncture (EA) of different frequencies on the expression of morphine conditioned place preference (CPP) in rats. METHODS SD rats were given 4 days consecutive trials in a computerized three-chamber "unbiased" CPP apparatus. Twenty-four hours later, the time spent on drug-pairing compartment of the rat was examined. Rats trained with CPP p...

This work by the eminent professor in the University of Vienna, better known on the Continent than here, was written to set forth the pathological manifestations of the sexual life, and to attempt to view them from an alienistic point of view, and thereby to find excuses for those strange perversions of that life which from time to time force themselves on public attention, but are well known i...