Mate

Sperm competition is a potent mechanism of post-copulatory sexual selection that has been found to shape reproductive morphologies and behaviours in promiscuous animals. Especially sperm size has been argued to evolve in response to sperm competition through its effect on sperm longevity, sperm motility, the ability to displace competing sperm and ultimately fertilization success. Additionally, sperm size has been observed to co-evolve with female reproductive morphology. Theoretical work predicts that sperm competition may select for longer sperm but may also favour shorter sperm if sperm size trades off with number...

Trait polymorphisms are widespread in nature, and explaining their stable co-existence is a central problem in ecology and evolution. Alternative reproductive tactics, in which individuals of one or more sex exhibit discrete, discontinuous traits in response to reproductive competition, represent a special case of trait polymorphism in which the traits are often complex, behavioural, and dynamic. Thus, studying how alternative reproductive tactics are maintained may provide general insights into how complex trait polymorphisms are maintained in populations...

The vomeronasal organ (VNO) is a specialized chemoreceptive structure in many vertebrates that detects chemical stimuli, mostly pheromones, which often elicit innate behaviors such as mating and aggression. Previous studies in rodents have demonstrated that chemical stimuli are actively transported to the VNO via a blood vessel-based pumping mechanism, and this pumping mechanism is necessary for vomeronasal stimulation in behaving animals. However, the molecular mechanisms that regulate the vomeronasal pump remain mostly unknown...

Maternal intermittent fasting (MIF) can have significant effects on several tissue and organ systems of the body, but there is a lack of research on the effects on the reproductive system. So, the aim of our study was to analyze the effects of MIF on fertility. B6C3F1Crl (C57BL/6N × C3H/HeN) male and female mice were selected for the first part of the experiments and were analyzed for body weight and fat weight after administration of the MIF intervention, followed by analysis of sperm counts and activation and embryo numbers...

We performed a plateau-linear reaction norm model (RNM) analysis of number born alive (NBA) in purebred Landrace pigs, where breeding value changes according to maximum temperature at mating day, using public meteorological observation data in Japan. We analysed 52,668 NBA records obtained from 10,320 Landrace sows. Pedigree data contained 99,201 animals. Off-farm daily temperature data at the nearest weather station from each of the farms were downloaded from the Japan Meteorological Agency website. A plateau-linear RNM analysis based on daily maximum temperature on mating day (threshold temperature of 16...

In recent years, there has been discussion and controversy relating to the treatment of inconclusive decisions in forensic feature comparison disciplines when considering the reliability of examination methods and results. In this article, we offer a brief review of the various viewpoints and suggestions that have been recently put forth, followed by a solution that we believe addresses the treatment of inconclusive decisions. We consider the issues in the context of method conformance and method performance as two distinct concepts, both of which are necessary for the determination of reliability...

The Mexican Rivulus, Millerichthys robustus , is an enigmatic species of seasonal killifish endemic of the Southeast Mexico that has changed paradigms on the evolution of annualism in killifishes. This species survives in ephemeral environments that experience a period of seasonal drought that causes the death of all adult fish. However, populations persist due to their drought-resistant embryos capable of arresting their development in diapause until the next the rainy season. Millerichthys evolved unique characteristics within annual killifishes as a functional sequential hermaphroditism, in which females change to males (protogynous) under perceived conditions of mate competition...

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Bird song is a crucial feature for mate choice and reproduction. Song can potentially communicate information related to the quality of the mate, through song complexity, structure or finer changes in syllable characteristics. It has been shown in zebra finches that those characteristics can be affected by various factors including motivation, hormone levels or extreme temperature. However, although the literature on zebra finch song is substantial, some factors have been neglected. In this paper, we recorded male zebra finches in two breeding contexts (before and after pairing) and in two ambient temperature conditions (stable and variable) to see how those factors could influence song production...

Auditory streaming underlies a receiver's ability to organize complex mixtures of auditory input into distinct perceptual "streams" that represent different sound sources in the environment. During auditory streaming, sounds produced by the same source are integrated through time into a single, coherent auditory stream that is perceptually segregated from other concurrent sounds. Based on human psychoacoustic studies, one hypothesis regarding auditory streaming is that any sufficiently salient perceptual difference may lead to stream segregation...

High fracture toughness at cryogenic temperature and radiation hardness can be conflicting requirements for the resins for the impregnation of superconducting magnet coils. The fracture toughness of different epoxy-resin systems at room temperature (RT) and at 77 K was measured, and their toughness was compared with that determined for a polyurethane, polycarbonate (PC) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Among the epoxy resins tested in this study, the MY750 system has the highest 77 K fracture toughness of K IC = 4...

11 C methionine (11 C-MET) is increasingly being used in addition to contrast-enhanced MRI to plan for radiotherapy of patients with glioblastomas. This study aimed to assess the recurrence pattern quantitatively. Glioblastoma patients undergoing 11C-MET PET examination before primary radiotherapy from 2018 to 2023 were included in the analysis. A clinical target volume was manually created and fused with MRI-based gross tumor volumes and MET PET-based biological target volume. The recurrence was noted as an area of contrast enhancement on the first MRI scan, which showed progression...

Background : Sarcopenia is defined as a loss of muscle mass, strength, and physical function associated with aging. It is due to a combination of genetic, environmental, and physiological factors. It is also associated with an increased risk of health problems. Since there are many different researchers in the field, with their own algorithms and cut-off points, there is no single criterion for diagnosis. This review aims to compare the prevalence of sarcopenia according to these different diagnostic criteria in older adult populations by age group and sex...

The gut microbiota of vertebrates is acquired from the environment and other individuals, including parents and unrelated conspecifics. In the laboratory mouse, a key animal model, inter-individual interactions are severely limited and its gut microbiota is abnormal. Surprisingly, our understanding of how inter-individual transmission impacts house mouse gut microbiota is solely derived from laboratory experiments. We investigated the effects of inter-individual transmission on gut microbiota in two subspecies of house mice (Mus musculus musculus and M...

The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae), is a major pest of citrus due to its role as the vector of the bacterium that causes huanglongbing. In commercial citrus, ACP control currently relies on the application of insecticides, which may not be sustainable long-term, nor practical in urban areas. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an alternative strategy in which large numbers of pests are reared, sterilized using radiation, and then released into the field to compete with wild individuals for matings, suppressing population growth...

In the fight against antimicrobial resistance, host defense peptides (HDPs) are increasingly referred to as promising molecules for the design of new antimicrobial agents. In terms of their future clinical use, particularly small, synthetic HDPs offer several advantages, based on which their application as feed additives has aroused great interest in the poultry sector. However, given their complex mechanism of action and the limited data about the cellular effects in production animals, their investigation is of great importance in these species...

PURPOSE: Maternal high-fat diet (HF) programs obesity, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperglycemia associated with increased endocannabinoid system (ECS) in the liver of adult male rat offspring. We hypothesized that maternal HF would induce sex specific ECS changes in the liver of newborn rats, prior to obesity onset, and maternal fish oil (FO) supplementation would reprogram the ECS and lipid metabolism markers preventing liver triglycerides (TG) accumulation...

Zoo populations of threatened species are a valuable resource for the restoration of wild populations. However, their small effective population size poses a risk to long-term viability, especially in species with high genetic load. Recent bioinformatic developments can identify harmful genetic variants in genome data. Here, we advance this approach, analysing the genetic load in the threatened pink pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri). We lifted the mutation-impact scores that had been calculated for the chicken (Gallus gallus) to estimate the genetic load in six pink pigeons...

The ascomycete fungus Aspergillus flavus infects and contaminates corn, peanuts, cottonseed, and tree nuts with toxic and carcinogenic aflatoxins. Subdivision between soil and host plant populations suggests that certain A. flavus strains are specialized to infect peanut, cotton, and corn despite having a broad host range. In this study, the ability of strains isolated from corn and/or soil in 11 Louisiana fields to produce conidia (field inoculum and male gamete) and sclerotia (resting bodies and female gamete) was assessed and compared with genotypic single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) differences between whole genomes...

Information on long-term effects of postovulatory oocyte aging (POA) on offspring is limited. Whether POA affects offspring by causing oxidative stress (OS) and mitochondrial damage is unknown. Here, in vivo-aged (IVA) mouse oocytes were collected 9 h after ovulation, while in vitro-aged (ITA) oocytes were obtained by culturing freshly ovulated oocytes for 9 h in media with low, moderate, or high antioxidant potential. Oocytes were fertilized in vitro and blastocysts transferred to produce F1 offspring. F1 mice were mated with naturally bred mice to generate F2 offspring...