Related topics: females · sperm

A gender perspective on the global migration of scholars

International recognition is key to many successful academic careers, but research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesshows female scientific researchers are less internationally mobile ...

Research team captures social dynamics of 'pee-shy' mice

Urine scent marks are the original social media, allowing animals to advertise their location, status and identity. Now Cornell research is shining a new light—via thermal imaging of mice—on how this behavior changes ...

Air pollution impairs successful mating of flies, shows study

Insect sexual communication relies to a significant extent on pheromones, chemical attractants that specifically allow males and females of a species to mate. Sex pheromones are distinctive to males and females of a species. ...

Male

Male (♂) refers to the sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male cannot reproduce sexually without access to at least one ovum from a female, but some organisms can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

Not all species share a common sex-determination system. In humans and most animals, sex is determined genetically but in other species it can be determined due to social, environmental, or other factors. The existence of two sexes seems to have been selected independently across different evolutionary lineages (see Convergent Evolution). Accordingly, sex is defined operationally across species by the type of gametes produced (ie: spermatozoa vs. ova) and differences between males and females in one lineage are not always predictive of differences in another.

Male/Female dimorphism between organisms or reproductive organs of different sexes is not limited to animals; male gametes are produced by chytrids, diatoms and land plants, among others. In land plants, female and male designate not only the female and male gamete-producing organisms and structures but also the structures of the sporophytes that give rise to male and female plants.

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