The paradox of different house flies with few genetic differences

In the steamy, often filthy world of the humble house fly, (the Musca domestica) clear division exists among the males of the species. Though not a civil war, there are differences, to be sure, between males in the north ...

Sex and diet affect protein machineries

Scientists from EMBL Heidelberg have discovered that the collection of proteins in an animal cell—called the proteome—is substantially affected by both the animal's sex and its diet. Understanding these individual proteomes ...

The evolution of bird-of-paradise sex chromosomes revealed

Birds-of-paradise are a group of songbird species, and are known for their magnificent male plumage and bewildering sexual display. Now, an international collaborative study involving the University of Vienna, Zhejiang University ...

How birds become male or female, and occasionally both

The highly unusual "semi-identical" Australian twins reported last week are the result of a rare event. It's thought the brother and sister (who have identical genes from their mother but not their father) developed from ...

What makes two species different?

Most evolutionary biologists distinguish one species from another based on reproductivity: members of different species either won't or can't mate with one another, or, if they do, the resulting offspring are often sterile, ...

Favoring female flowers in hemp horticulture

A UConn plant science professor working with hemp plants has developed a way to maximize the production of female flowers, which produce significantly higher quantities of cannabinoids than male flowers.

Where sexes come by the thousands

By the end of every spring semester, students in my introductory biology course at Vanderbilt University have become quite familiar with natural variation in human sex chromosomes. They know, for example, that most females ...

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