Abstract
I once heard Frank Beach tell Ethel Tobach, one of the editors of The Biopsychology of Development, that if he had had more time he could of written a shorter chapter. The chapter in question was Beach’s famous “Ramstergig” paper. There Beach noted that while the Ramstergig followed precisely certain current theories concerning the action of gonadal hormones, the rat, hamster, and guinea pig did not. In a recent paper (McGill, 1977), I carried Beach’s analysis a step further and discussed instances in which “species differences” could in fact be duplicated when genotype was varied within a particular species. My purpose at present is to enlarge upon that theme by describing specific experiments that show that different genotypes within a species differ in such items as hormonal induction of receptivity in females and retention of sexual behavior after castration in males. I shall also discuss the response of certain castrated males to the injection of different amounts of steroid hormones, although in this case within-species differences have not as yet been documented. If the chapter appears to be short, it is not because I had plenty of time to write it, but rather because there is relatively little work that has been done to date in the area of within-species genotype-hormone interactions. Thus the chapter closes with some speculations as to what future research may bring.
Research from the author’s laboratory described in this chapter was supported by U.S.P.H.S. Research Grant No. GM-07495.
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McGill, T.E. (1978). Genotype-Hormone Interactions. In: McGill, T.E., Dewsbury, D.A., Sachs, B.D. (eds) Sex and Behavior. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0421-8_6
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