The formation of primordial follicles in mice is most intense within 3 days after birth, and a large number of oocytes are lost during this period. The primordial follicle pool is established shortly after birth. Newborns will experience starvation for a period of time before ingesting breast milk nutrition. When mice are starved after birth, dynamic changes in autophagy and apoptosis occur. Both autophagy and apoptosis can affect the survival of cells, which is probably related to the loss of oocytes during the formation of primordial follicles. In this study, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to research morphological alterations of ovaries starved for 1.5 d and 2 d, respectively. The ovaries of the newborn mice (Mus musculus domesticus) were collected from mice with different treatments for making electron microscope sections. Electron micrographs of ovarian sections were taken by TEM. Compared with normal control oocytes (Fig. 1a), most of the oocytes starved for 1.5 d (Fig. 1b) maintained normal cell morphology, while a large number of apoptotic or pre-apoptotic cells appeared in the ovaries of mice starved for 2 days (Fig. 1c), and almost no normal cells were observed. It was found that the number of autophagosomes in oocytes was significantly increased in mice starved for 1.5 days compared with the control (Fig. 2). All data were analyzed with GraphPad Prism software and were represent as the Mean ± SD of at least three independent experiments. Student's t-test was used to compare the difference between treatment group and the control. The ovaries of mice starved for 2 days showed evident damages to the ovary. Mice starved for 2 days were at the threshold of life, and a small number of individuals died. TEM morphological observation showed that compared with the control group, the number of autophagosomes in the oocytes of mice starved for 2 days was significantly reduced, and there were more signs of apoptosis in most oocytes (Fig. 3), which suggested that excessive starvation would cause reduced autophagy and apoptosis of a large number of oocytes. The results of this experiment show that starvation treatment affects the dynamic changes of autophagy and apoptosis during the formation of primordial follicles.