A recent study published in Open Biology reports that exposure to intense light almost instantly provokes courtship behavior in male fruit flies (Drosophila). Surprisingly, the researchers observed both male-male and male-female ...
A small international team of animal behavior researchers has found that species of glass frogs whose males help care for offspring tend to have smaller testes than species whose males do not help care for offspring. In their ...
Among many species, breeding preferences and tactics can differ among males and females. When aggressive behavior by males toward unreceptive females goes awry, it may result in failure to reproduce, and in some cases, fatality ...
Research led by the Universidad de Alcala, Spain, has revisited Early Neolithic human remains found within the Galería del Sílex cave in Spain's Sierra de Atapuerca cave system.
As humans contemplate life on other planets, we are immediately confronted with two choices. One is a journey to another solar system that would take tens of thousands of years (with current technology), requiring around ...
Traces of sex hormones extracted from a woolly mammoth's tusk provide the first direct evidence that adult males experienced musth, a testosterone-driven episode of heightened aggression against rival males, according to ...
Plants & Animals
May 3, 2023
0
119
An extreme closeup of feathers from a bird with an uncanny ability to hold water while it flies could inspire the next generation of absorbent materials.
Plants & Animals
Apr 11, 2023
0
94
The more we learn about the biological world, the more complex it becomes.
Evolution
Mar 28, 2023
0
55
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 ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 21, 2023
0
63
Researchers of the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have been investigating dogs' reactions to wolf howls. Are there dogs that are more prone to reply with howling? Are these dogs genetically closer ...
Ecology
Feb 6, 2023
3
1671
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.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
