Feds Fund Nearly $20,000 Dissertation on Mating Habits of Syrian Hamsters
Photo Credit: Washington Free Beacon The National Science Foundation (NSF) is giving an assistant professor nearly $20,000 to write a dissertation on the mating habits of Syrian hamsters.
“What factors drive a female to choose a particular mate?” the grant for the project begins. “This is an important question to scientists interested in animal behavior, sexual selection, and life history theory. Individual variation in female mate preferences and choice is common. However, our understanding of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon is still quite limited.”
Thus, the NSF-funded dissertation seeks to understand how female Syrian hamsters’ reproductive age affects their “mate preference and choosiness” for male Syrian hamsters.
“The research team will experimentally accelerate reproductive aging in young female hamsters to determine if reproductive age modulates mate choice behavior,” the grant explained. “This will be the first study to assess the effects of reproductive aging on behavior in mammals.”
Young adult female Syrian hamsters will be injected with 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which makes their ovaries age faster, to see the drug’s effect on hamsters’ sexual preferences. Female hamsters usually prefer a “dominant” male, the grant said. (Read more from this story HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
