Paced mating behavior in the naturally cycling and the hormone-treated female rat

During a sexual encounter with a male rat, a female rat will display both r eceptive (lordosis) and preceptive (hopping, darting, and ear-wiggling) beh aviors. Additionally, if mating occurs in an environment where the female r at may approach and withdraw from the male rat, she will control the timing of the receipt of mounts, intromissions, and ejaculations. This temporal p atterning by the female rat is known as paced mating behavior. The present experiment compared paced mating behavior in rats during an intact, proestr ous phase and an ovariectomized phase, during which they were treated with estradiol benzoate (10 mu g per rat) and progesterone (0.5 mg per rat). Tho ugh no differences in sexual receptivity were observed across the two phase s, patterns of paced mating behavior were found to differ. Specifically, fe male rats exhibited significantly longer contact-return latencies when horm one treated than when intact. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights res erved.