Genetic and Social Modifications of Mating Patterns of Mice

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Abstract
An unexpectedly high proportion of fertile matings was found to occur during the first night after females of several substrains of BALB/c mice were paired with male mice. This synchrony of mating on the first night was enhanced by housing the females individually for 2 weeks prior to pairing. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of females from most other strains mated on the third night after pairing. This latter pattern was also evident in the data from F1 hybrids between SJL/Wt (a strain with a third night peak) and BALB/cWt, and between SJL/Wt and 2 other strains with third night peaks indicating that the tendency for third night mating is inherited in a dominant manner, whereas the tendency for first night mating is inherited in a recessive manner. Analysis of the mating patterns of the seven recombinant inbred (RI) strains derived from BALB/cBy and C57BL/6By showed that both first and third night progenitor mating tendencies were recovered among the RI strains giving further support to the hypothesis of a dominant mode of inheritance for the third night mating tendency, and a recessive mode of inheritance for the first night tendency.