Named for its ropy-looking long branches, Aplysina cauliformis, a coral reef sponge, provides a critical 3D habitat for marine organisms and helps to stabilize the foundation of coral reefs. However, these upright-branching ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 26, 2024
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96
The evolution of sexual reproduction in living beings is one of the biggest mysteries in biology. There are two known modes of reproduction: asexual, where the organism creates clones of itself, and sexual, where gametes ...
Evolution
Aug 19, 2022
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5
A new study describes the formation of the body axis in the immortal freshwater polyp Hydra. It is controlled by the so-called Hippo signaling pathway, a molecular biological process that, among other functions, ensures that ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 15, 2022
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69
One of the greatest enigmas of evolutionary biology is that while sex is the dominant mode of reproduction among multicellular organisms, asexual reproduction appears much more efficient and less costly. However, in a study ...
Evolution
Jun 6, 2019
2
358
A team of scientists has sequenced, for the first time, a tiny worm that belongs to a group of exclusively asexual species that originated approximately 18 million years ago—making it one of the oldest living lineages of ...
Biotechnology
Sep 21, 2017
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100
Evolutionary theory predicts that pairs of chromosomes within asexual organisms will evolve independently of each other and become increasingly different over time in a phenomenon called the 'Meselson effect'.
Evolution
Jan 26, 2016
3
3139
For a long time, prognoses forecasting the evolutionary future of organisms were considered mere speculation. Together with researchers from Cambridge and Santa Barbara scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental ...
Evolution
Nov 12, 2014
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0
A new study published in the journal American Naturalist helps explain how spatial variation in natural environments helps spur evolution and give rise to biodiversity.
Ecology
Sep 17, 2013
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0
(Phys.org)—Diatoms (unicellular photosynthetic organisms) reproduce through asexual cell division alternating with short periods of sexual reproduction. A German and Belgian team has now determined that pheromones play ...
Biochemistry
Dec 14, 2012
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0
What's so great about sex? From an evolutionary perspective, the answer is not as obvious as one might think. An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part as ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 6, 2009
6
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