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Dysregulation of this balance is implicated in neuropsychiatric disease, and while sex differences in this balance have been described, the biological bases remain unclear. To quantify sex differences in this trade-off, we tested mice (n=74 male, 62 female) on four home-cage based foraging tasks with an operant pellet dispensing device, Feeding Experimentation Device 3 (FED3). Mice completed the tasks continuously over multiple days and the tasks were their only source of food. Across multiple tasks, males showed higher win-stay behaviour than females, indicating greater exploitation of previously rewarded actions, an effect that was modest in size but highly significant. Power analyses revealed that &gt;30 mice per sex were needed to detect these modest but significant sex differences with 80% power. No consistent sex differences were observed in pellet intake, suggesting that differences in exploitation did not reflect differences in hunger drive or demand for pellets. Exploitation is a more efficient strategy when environmental parameters are fixed, while exploration can be more advantageous when parameters such as reward locations are changing and uncertain. We tested this idea by re-running our mice in a probabilistic foraging task, where actions led to uncertain probabilities of reward. While males continued to show higher levels of win-stay behaviour on this task, this no longer led to increases in accuracy. Behavioural modelling also supported this framework, demonstrating that stronger win-stay behaviour was most advantageous in deterministic models, and less advantageous in probabilistic models. Together, our findings demonstrate that male and female mice have small but significant differences in their exploration-exploitation balance, which leads to more accurate foraging in certain, but not uncertain, environments.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.64898\/2026.04.02.716124","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,6]],"date-time":"2026-04-06T22:50:14Z","timestamp":1775515814000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Sex differences in exploration\u2013exploitation strategies during home-cage decision making"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-4678-0601","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chantelle L.","family":"Murrell","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centre, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3722-6666","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alex A.","family":"Legaria","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Katie B.","family":"McCullough","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Andrew","family":"Nwacha","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-1696-7402","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Monsurat O.","family":"Nasiru","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Sebastian Alves","family":"Ferreira Dias","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Rebecca","family":"Chase","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-2941-4859","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mason R.","family":"Barrett","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0191-1899","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matt","family":"Gaidica","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Naoki","family":"Hiratani","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9658-2601","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Meaghan C.","family":"Creed","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"Department of Anaesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States"},{"name":"McKelvey School for Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis. 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