Sexual size differences are widespread in biology, yet the "how" behind them often remains vague. We asked a concrete question in a classic model organism: when female flies are larger than males, do individual organs achieve this by adding more cells, enlarging the cells they already have, or mixing both strategies—and is this consistent across the body?

Harmful genetic changes in sperm become substantially more common as men age because some are actively favored during sperm production, new research has revealed.

Behavioural plasticity can play a key role in evolution by either facilitating or impeding genetic adaptation. The latter occurs when behaviours mitigate selection pressures that otherwise would targe...

Çağan Şekercioğlu was an ambitious, but perhaps naive graduate student when, 26 years ago, he embarked on a simple data-compilation project that would soon evolve into a massive career-defining achiev...

How to measure female ejaculate ejection, is it related to pre-mating sexual selection, or influenced by post-mating sexual environment? We explore these questions in fruit flies.

Over 20 species of geographically and phylogenetically diverse bird species produce convergent whining vocalizations towards their respective brood parasites. Model presentation and playback experiments across multiple continents suggest that these learned calls provoke an innate response even among allopatric species.

Isabelle P. Neylan, Ana L. Salgado, Rujuta V. Vaidya, Cullen Guillory & Morgan W. Kelly This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here. Unders…

The testis, with the highest number of transcriptionally active genes among human tissues, offers a unique window into how aging affects complex gene regulation. Recent advancements in single-cell RNA sequencing have enabled multi-species studies of aging-related transcriptome changes in testes. However, a comprehensive aging-related cross-species platform for analyzing testicular single-cell transcriptomes remains absent. To address this gap, we developed Aging-TCA (Aging-related Testicular Cell Atlas, available at http://tca.xielab.tech/)— a comprehensive online platform containing aging-related testicular single cell and spatial transcriptome profiles from human, cynomolgus monkey, mouse, and zebrafish across 89 samples and over 460, 000 testicular cells, nuclei or spots. Aging-TCA provides versatile tools for temporal and spatial analyzing testicular aging, including aging-related testicular gene expression visualization, cell-cell communication comparisons, cell-trajectory analysis, gene regulatory network analysis, testicular cell type auto-identification, time-series analysis, and spatial transcriptome comparisons. In summary, we provide a novel platform Aging-TCA for advancing cross-species research into testicular aging, facilitating future investigations in this field.

There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

In a recent study published in Cell Metabolism, a research paper provides the first evidence that sperm microRNAs act as carriers of epigenetic information, enabling the intergenerational transmission of paternal exercise capacity and metabolic health, thereby exerting profound effects on offspring development.

Meta-analyses are widely used to understand how species and ecosystems respond to global change, but most assume that variability among studies is constant. This assumption can hide important biologi....

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

Agencies that fund scientific research must choose: is it more effective to give large grants to a few elite researchers, or small grants to many researchers? Large grants would be more effective only...

Analyses of symptoms and genomic data indicate that autism that manifests in early childhood is distinct from autism that is diagnosed later in development.

Several species of birds from different continents use and understand similar alarm calls when they see an invader that might lay an egg in their nest – this shared call hints at the origin of language

Zanette et al. experimentally show that fear of humans far exceeds that of lions throughout the mammal community in a premier African protected area; strengthening the evidence that fear of the human ...