Pollution Fallout: Are unattractive males Great-gram’s fault?

A new study of mate preferences in rodents raises the prospect that pollutant exposures can have behavioral repercussions that persist generation after generation. In the experiment, female rats shunned males whose grandfathers had been exposed in the womb to a fungicide used on fruit crops.

Though brief, the vinclozolin exposures occurred when the fetal males’ reproductive organs were developing.