The cardiovascular response to 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino) tetralin (8-OH-DPAT), a selective putative 5-HT1A receptor agonist, has been investigated in the rat. Comparisons were made with clonidine, a centrally acting hypotensive agent with negligible affinity for 5-HT receptors. In conscious, spontaneously hypertensive (SH) rats, 8-OH-DPAT caused dose-related and sustained falls in blood pressure and heart rate that were unaffected by depletion of brain 5-HT by p-chlorophenylalanine. 8-OH-DPAT caused hypotension and bradycardia in anesthetized normotensive rats. In pithed rats, 8-OH-DPAT neither lowered blood pressure nor affected the cardiovascular response to spinal sympathetic stimulation or to phenylephrine. The response to 8-OH-DPAT was blocked selectively by intracisternal injection of 8-methoxy-2-(N-2-chloroethyl-N-n propyl) amino tetralin (8-MeO-CIEPAT), a putative irreversible 5-HT1A receptor antagonist, and was abolished in animals whose central monoamine transmitter stores were depleted selectively by combined treatment with DL-alpha-monofluoromethyl-dopa and dopamine. The cardiovascular response to 8-OH-DPAT was inhibited selectively by metergoline, methiothepin, and 8-MeO-CIEPAT; it was nonselectively inhibited by (+/-)-pindolol, (+/-)-cyanopindolol, buspirone, yohimbine, idazoxan, and WY 26392; and was unaffected by prazosin and cis-flupenthixol. These results establish that the cardiovascular response to 8-OH-DPAT in the rat is centrally mediated and point to the putative 5-HT1A receptor as the key site involved. An indirect link involving a catecholaminergic mechanism is suggested by the fact that alpha 2-adrenoceptor antagonists are also inhibitory despite 8-OH-DPAT having no direct agonist effects at alpha 2-adrenoceptors per se.