Meeting Abstract
We measured serum anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) concentrations in 9-month-old female Siberian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus) to determine if this biomarker of reproductive age can forecast which females would produce viable offspring after mating. Our prior investigations determined that a substantial proportion of female hamsters experience reproductive failure when first mated at 9 months of age. In the present study we collected a small blood sample from 9-month-old females two weeks before pairing them with males and then measured AMH in the serum. Of the 26 females that showed signs of mating, 10 produced viable litters and 16 failed to litter. Mean (± SEM) AMH concentration in females that produced viable pups (25.3 ± 4.8 ng/mL) was significantly greater than in females that did not (13.9 ± 2.5 ng/mL). However, many females that failed to produce live pups had AMH concentrations that were well within the range of successful females. Nevertheless, AMH concentrations at the extreme high and low ends of the range (>35.0 and <8.0 ng/mL) were generally predictive of successful and failed mating outcomes, respectively. Whereas mean AMH values were informative of mating outcomes at the group level, an individual female’s AMH concentration might only be predictive of her breeding potential if her test result deviates substantially from the mean. Our findings will be considered within the context of conservation biology, in terms of optimizing reproductive management decisions for endangered mammals.
