Fig. 2

Estrous cycle information is required to detect sex differences in anxiety-related behavior. A Behavioral data are shown for the open field, light–dark box, and elevated plus maze tests. On the left, we reproduced our previously published data in which females are separated into proestrus and diestrus phases and compared to males [5]. On the right, we performed the re-analysis of the data by comparing the merged female group (proestrus + diestrus) to males. B Density distribution plots depict the normal distributions of the light–dark box data for merged female groups compared to males (top) and males compared to females separated by the estrous cycle stage (bottom). The degree of overlap between the distributions is given below each plot. Box plots (box, 1st–3rd quartile; horizontal line, median; whiskers, 1.5 × IQR); NS not significant; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; one-way ANOVA with the Tukey’s post hoc test (left); Welch two-sample T-test (right). Die (light pink), diestrus; Pro (purple), proestrus; Female (red), mixed females; Male (blue), males. n = 12–16 animals/group