Tag: "maturity" at biology news

Corals -- More complex than you?

... Corals which take at least 5years to reach sexual maturity (compared with the laboratory fruitfly whose generation lasts only 3-4 weeks), and which have long and overlapping generation times, may thus be a living ‘museum?of ancestral animal genes. However corals use all those genes to produce only 12-14 ...

A rarity among arachnids, whip spiders have a sociable family life

...ve groups. As soon as the siblings approach sexual maturity though (about 12 to 14 months of age), they start showing aggressive, life-threatening behavior toward each other. To test if D. diadema were congregating simply to inhabit a preferred site in the cages, Rayor and Lisa Taylor, CALS '01, created c...

Long-lived deep-sea fishes imperiled by technology, overfishing

...and slower metabolisms and many don't reach sexual maturity for 30 to 40 years, Heppell said. The harvest of older fish may have an even greater impact on these threatened populations because older fish are more likely to breed successfully than younger fish. "When you buy orange roughy at the store, you a...

Twenty of world's 162 grouper species threatened with extinction

...years old. Several species only reach reproductive maturity later in life, making them particularly vulnerable to fishing before they mature. In addition, commercial fishing that targets reproductive gatherings of adults further hinders replenishment of unmanaged populations. The threatened groupers includ...

A healthier start to a pig's life

...re weaning stimulates the digestive tract to reach maturity faster. This helps it to change from the digestive and absorptive needs of milk, to those of an adult diet." The EUREKA study showed that giving the lectin to piglets at 11-12 days old enhanced successful weaning at 28 days. A welcome innovation ...

A potential biological cause for sudden infant death syndrome

...tems for vital or homeostatic functions reach full maturity only towards the end of the first year of life," Kinney says. The researchers note that despite the national Back to Sleep campaign, which urges caregivers to put babies to bed on their backs, 65 percent of the SIDS infants in this study were fou...

New clues to how sex evolves

...t C. elegans, which is hermaphroditic and grows to maturity in only three days, is under a lot of competitive pressure to reproduce quickly, and that different binding sites on different Pairing Centers makes for faster chromosome pairing and thus faster reproduction -- unlike organisms that need to find a ma...

Transplanted photoreceptor precursor cells restore visual function in mice with retinal degeneration

...ation requires that cells reach a certain level of maturity before being transplanted into the eye. When the cells were transplanted at a very early stage, before they were assigned their specialized function, they survived but failed to integrate into the mature retina. Only one group of cells remained via...

The first tree genome is published: Poplar holds promise as renewable bioenergy resource

...can add a dozen feet of growth each year and reach maturity in as few as four years, permitting selective breeding for large-scale sustainable plantation forestry," said Dr. Sam Foster of the U.S. Forest Service. "This rapid growth coupled with conversion of the lignocellulosic portion of the plant to ethanol...

Wheat gene may boost foods' nutrient content

...effect on Grain Protein Content, accelerates grain maturity and increases grain protein and micronutrient content by 10 to 15 percent in the wheat varieties studied so far. To prove that all these effects were produced by this gene, the researchers created genetically modified wheat lines with reduced levels ...

Tests for 'face-blindness' reveal disorder may not be so rare

... prosopagnosia, due to brain damage suffered after maturity from head trauma, stroke, and degenerative diseases. The other type is called developmental prosopagnosia. These individuals can have similar symptoms but with no evidence of brain damage. It is this group that may be the most common. "Individuals ...

How bad is malaria anemia? It may depend on your genes

...F to the cells decreases both the final number and maturity of red blood cells. The researchers believe this effect can lead to anemia. When infected with plasmodium, mice genetically engineered to lack MIF experience less severe anemia and are more likely to survive. Without MIF around to prevent blood cel...

Leptin found to control appetite and limb development in frogs

...t, to being eaten by predators and reaching sexual maturity at a later age. Denver speculates that leptin is probably important to gauge whether the tadpole has adequate energy reserves---in the form of body fat - to start metamorphosis at an appropriate time. Finding leptin in the Xenopus genome was no smal...

A dichotomy in migration patterns found for sea turtles in east Atlantic

...sea turtle (Caretta caretta), which reaches sexual maturity at about 30 years of age, typically undergoes a shift from an oceanic juvenile stage to a shallow-water, coastal adult stage. But the new findings--obtained by newly-improved methods for satellite tracking of the adult turtles' geographical movements...

Alaska seal pup diet may hold key to decline of population

...who consume an extremely low fat diet reach sexual maturity later than those who consume a high fat diet, she noted. In addition, the researchers are: Examining fecal matter to see how efficiently the animals in the two groups digest their food. Animals on the low fat diet may be processing their food less...

Worm hormone discovery may aid fight against parasitic disease

...e worm to develop through its normal stages, reach maturity and reproduce. When the researchers blocked that hormonal signal by engineering mutant worms that couldn't manufacture the ligand, however, the mutants' development stopped before they reached maturity. Instead, the worms went into a "resting" stag...

FSU biologist says new dinosaur is oldest cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex

...ced rings corresponding with slower growth to full maturity by the end of its relatively long 13-year life. Its cranial crest would have reached its full size by then, thus providing an accurate model for scientists. The bones of the smaller specimen had only six closely spaced rings and no widely spaced ones...

For some young fish, early gene expression is a clear harbinger of fated lifestyle

...e population of young fish. Before reaching sexual maturity and leaving their natal stream, migratory individuals undergo dramatic morphological, physiological, and behavioral changes that prepare them for adulthood in open fresh and salty waters. In their innovative work, which is based on studying the gene...

Male elephants woo females with precise chemistry

...ers allows other elephants to distinguish both the maturity of male elephants in musth and the phase of musth. The researchers hope to use the study's results to "tease apart the entire route of how pheromones move" from the source elephant to the recipient. They already have been studying the other end of ...

Fish evolve a longer lifespan by evolving a longer reproductive period, researchers find

...ry into three non-overlapping segments: the age at maturity (birth to first reproduction), the reproductive lifespan (first to last reproduction) and the post-reproductive lifespan (last reproduction to death). They also devised a statistical criterion for evaluating whether or not guppies had a post-reprodu...

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