Brood X cicadas will cause limited damage to trees, yard plants across eastern U.S.
... all. Rather, the damage cicadas cause occurs when females use a special, razor-sharp appendage to cut open branches and twigs, into which they insert their fertilized eggs. Clay hopes to dispel worries people may have about Brood X. "Cicadas don't bite, and they don't attack people," Clay said. "They are ...For some gorillas, local kin may mean local peace
...y benefit younger males as they attempt to attract females and form new groups, since male-male aggression is thought to hinder the acquisition and retention of females. Similar scenarios have been reported for some bird species, and there is ample evidence of such relationships underlying aspects of human s...'Male-targeting' bacterium's genome is deciphered
... impacts include: - Parthenogenesis (infected females reproducing in the absence of mating to produce in...bility (the limiting of reproduction of uninfected females that mate with infected males). The male-targeted effects are thought to have arisen because Wolbach...Biology behind homosexuality in sheep, study confirms
...ductive functions. The oSDN in rams that preferred females was "significantly" larger and contained more neurons than in male-oriented rams and ewes. In addition, the oSDN of the female-oriented rams expressed higher levels of aromatase, a substance that converts testosterone to estradiol so the androgen hor...Duke study gives first worldwide measure of sea turtle casualties by longline fishing
...t "precipitous declines" in the numbers of nesting females are already being recorded. Because the air breathing turtles can often still surface after they are snared, most deaths are not caused by drowning but by "injury related to hooking or entangling," Crowder said. Previous research, the study also not...Pacific leatherback turtle could go extinct in 10 years
...ve dropped from approximately 115,000 reproductive females to fewer than 3,000 remaining today, a decline of 97 percent. "On land, the canary in the coal mine warns humans of impending environmental danger," said Roderic Mast, Conservation International Vice President and President of the International Sea T...Study predicts conditions for sustainable lion trophy hunting
... few years of adjustment to hunting, the number of females stabilized no matter what the yearly quota, as long as only males 5 or older were taken. Female populations stabilized at a slightly higher number if only males 6 or older were taken. "By maximizing the population, hunters maximize their harvest," sa...Endangered sea turtles make a dramatic turnaround
... a decade. "Beach surveys and active protection of females and their eggs can make a difference for the survival of this endangered species in this part of the Caribbean." Weighing up to 200 pounds with a shell some 3 feet in length, the hawksbill turtle has vanished from many areas of its former range aroun...U. Chicago study overturns conclusion of historic human genome data
...lso cause this high traffic volume on the X. Since females have two X chromosomes and males have only one, th..."An X-linked gene spends two-thirds of its time in females compared with one-half for an autosomal gene, thus the X chromosome becomes 'demasculinized,'" the r...Primates trade smell for sight
... and most New World monkeys carry only two, though females can sometimes have three. Only howler monkeys routinely have three genes occurring in both sexes. Thus, full trichromatic vision evolved twice in primates--once in the common ancestor of apes and Old World monkeys, about 23 million years ago, and onc...MBL scientists confirm evolutionary exception
...ent than asexual reproduction (or mitosis) whereby females effectively make clones of themselves. Although asexual organisms often enjoy short-term success against their sexual ancestors, they are rarely found as higher-order taxa, implying that they cannot survive in evolutionary time. While many hypothese...SMCM professor discovers cattle hormones that leak into streams and alter fish reproduction
...ess estrogen and 45 percent more testosterone than females from the uncontaminated stream. The scientists caution that further investigation of livestock farms is "urgently needed if we are to understand the possible adverse effects of these compounds on aquatic ecosystem health." They say the priority shou...Alcoholics with antisocial personality disorder have blunted emotional reactivity
...e group of incarcerated young adolescent males and females using the same startle reflex method, as well as other ways to probe emotional reactivity, such as stress-hormone responses. We are also looking at environmental risk factors common to both conduct and drug problems, such as poor parental monitoring...Automated analysis of bee behavior may yield better robots
...ntly remember the physical distance to food, while females follow landmarks to find treats, Balch says. "We're involved to measure precisely where the monkeys go and how long it takes them to find the food," Balch explains. "We use the information from experiments to test hypotheses on spatial memory. We'...Sport hunting hits evolutionary traits in bighorn sheep
...n rams become capable of holding their own against females during the rut. The scientists used quantitative genetic analyses to explore the evolutionary response to hunter selection on ram weight and horn size. "Unrestricted harvesting of trophy rams has contributed to a decline in the very traits th...Changing one gene launches new fly species
...th the temperate version of the ds2 gene preferred females with the same gene; tropical males preferred tropical females. "Developing increased cold tolerance was an important step for flies that migrated out of Africa to Europe and Asia," Wu said. The change in pheromones, which altered patterns of sexual ...Estrogen promotes gender differences in brain's response to stress
... The authors found that without stress, males and females performed equally well on the task. Likewise, aft...xposure to higher levels of stress, both males and females made significant memory errors. However, after exposure to a moderate level of stress, females were...Researchers show absence of key oxygen-sensing molecule leads to developmental defects
...es in the mice. In addition, treatment of pregnant females with the same molecule led to increased viability in their newborns, suggesting that "therapy that reduces oxidative stress, increases (newborn) survival to birth," the researchers reported. "This research also has implications for a role of Epas1/HI...Genes control severity of heart failure, study finds
...eproducible and severe form of heart failure, with females of another healthy mouse strain. Some of the resulting offspring exhibited severe heart failure, while others inherited genes from their healthy mothers that protected them from the disorder. By screening the genomes of the offspring, the team uncove......"Until now, social scientists assumed that because females invest a lot in social relationships, they must ga... least 15 feet of another adult and to groom other females or to allow other females to pick dirt, ticks and other parasites from their own hair. The researche...