Related topics: men

Tiny worms are helping scientists better understand fertility

Studying sex from just the male perspective misses half the experience. But much of what we know about the origins of reproductive cells comes from looking at sperm and egg formation separately—or only focusing on sperm.

What does it mean to be asexual?

In recent years, we've seen a burgeoning social movement for the acceptance of asexuality. We've also seen more asexual characters popping up in shows such as Heartstopper and Sex Education.

Research outlines how sex differences have evolved

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and Heidelberg University in Germany have shown that sex differences in animals vary dramatically across species, organs and developmental stages, and evolve quickly at the gene ...

Climate change's impacts on wildlife can vary by sex

Biological sex can be an important factor in predicting how animal and plant populations respond to temperature changes, from sea turtles whose sex is determined by the heat on the beach where they hatch, to female Arctic ...

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Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into male and female types (or sexes). Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells (gametes) to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents. Gametes can be identical in form and function (known as isogametes), but in many cases an asymmetry has evolved such that two sex-specific types of gametes (heterogametes) exist: male gametes are small, motile, and optimized to transport their genetic information over a distance, while female gametes are large, non-motile and contain the nutrients necessary for the early development of the young organism.

An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces: males produce male gametes (spermatozoa, or sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova, or egg cells); individual organisms which produce both male and female gametes are termed hermaphroditic. Frequently, physical differences are associated with the different sexes of an organism; these sexual dimorphisms can reflect the different reproductive pressures the sexes experience.

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