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Tag: "preference" at biology news

Termites feed through good vibrations

... blocks and found that the termites switched their preference to the large blocks. Prof Lai created an artificia... and the scientists found that the termites had no preference for either large or small blocks. Broadcasting static into small blocks did not affect termite choic...

Children's taste sensitivity and food choices influenced by taste gene

...cted children's sweet preference, along with their preference for sweet-tasting beverages and foods. Children wi..., bitter receptor genotype did not influence sweet preference in adults. Instead, effects of race/ethnicity were the strongest determinants. Mennella comments, "W...

Cricket's finicky mating behavior boosts biodiversity

...reason, it's very important that she exercise this preference in order to keep the species distinct." Mendelson spent three and one-half years studying the Laupala cricket with Kerry Shaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maryland. The thumbnail-sized Laupala spawns new species at the rate of 4....

Life detection instrument passes key test on road to Mars

...portantly, she and Mathies were able to detect the preference of Earth's amino acids for left-handedness over right-handedness. This "homochirality" is a hallmark of life that Mathies thinks is a critical test that must be done on Mars. "We feel that measuring homochirality - a prevalence of one type of handed...

Certain fish have a special mating preference

...t female selection on film. He examined the mating preference of about 50 mosquitofish females, where each femal...ies of livebearing fish also exhibit female mating preference for males with large genitalia. If true, he said, the evolution of this mating preference might help...

IMF Launches World’s First DNA Database for Myeloma Patients

...t female selection on film. He examined the mating preference of about 50 mosquitofish females, where each femal...ies of livebearing fish also exhibit female mating preference for males with large genitalia. If true, he said, the evolution of this mating preference might help...

Wild grasses and man-made wheats advance research capabilities

...ng funded by the Texas Wheat Producers Board. "My preference is to cross wheat with wheat," Rudd said. "The best chance for success is to cross High Plains wheat with High Plains wheat. But to get genetic variability, you cross state lines or even into other countries. The next step would be to cross species, ...

Gambling monkeys give insight into neural machinery of risk

...red to gamble by looking at the risky target. This preference held, regardless of whether the scientists made the risky target reward more variable, or whether the monkeys had received more or less fruit juice during the course of the day. "There was no rational reason why monkeys might prefer one of these opt...

Gene controlling circadian rhythms linked to drug addiction

...ng than control mice, demonstrated by their strong preference for the location where the drug was administered. In addition, Clock-deficient mice produced more dopamine than control mice did, suggesting that the gene controlling circadian rhythms is a key regulator of the brain's reward system and may influenc...

New technique could alter field of mouse genetics

...Bac inserts randomly into the genome, with a clear preference for genes. This bodes well for its use in mutating genes and for identifying unrecognized genes in places of the genome that have been especially difficult to sequence. Furthermore, the markers it carries make it easy to find. In Xu's lab, the jumpin...

Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland

...r polarized or diffused light, they exercise their preference to fly over the (dry land) area of diffused light," said Dr. Shashar. This is a survival instinct, since if they flew over a body of water, the locusts would be deprived of both nourishment and a place to land and rest. This research, said Dr. Shasha...

Single gene is genetic switch for fly sexual behavior

... critical for the male courtship ritual and males' preference for mating with females, as previous studies have shown. Now, Barry J. Dickson and Ebru Demir of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences show just how intimately fruitless is linked to these stereotypically male ...

Picky female frogs drive evolution of new species in less than 8,000 years

...d from the rest of its lineage and had developed a preference for certain male calls. The male frog call in this population has diverged significantly from both the northern and southern lineage calls. "If females have a reason not to get the mating wrong, and they have some way of telling the males apart - th...

Female butterflies go for sparkle -- not size -- when choosing to mate

... different size and color. They then tested female preference for wing size, eyespot size, quantity of eyespots ... don't know what causes the change from a female's preference for relatively small pupils in this species to the likely female preference for much larger UV-refle...

Sperm trading can resolve hermaphrodite mating conflicts

...uch cases, hermaphrodites are predicted to share a preference to copulate in the more beneficial gender role. This would appear to make the interests of any two potential mates incompatible. For 20 years, evolutionary biologists have speculated that hermaphrodites may solve such mating conflicts by "trading spe...

Brain activity related to processing faces is similar in people with, without autism

...ous studies could not disentangle the effects of a preference to look away from faces from actual brain deficits in the ability to process faces. "We required participants to indicate whether faces were looking left or right, thereby requiring that they look at the picture of the face," Dichter said. In additi...

Older female fish prefer imperfect male mates, study finds

...age of female swordtail fish increase, so does the preference for males with asymmetrical markings, according to...uestion of whether there may be a change in mating preference over time in other species as well. In a current study on human attraction, for example, the average...

Discovering the first steps in transcription-coupled repair

...n this way they discovered that XPG shows a strong preference for binding to bubbles of just the size typical of transcription -- that is, the size of the bubble opened by RNAPII. Identification of this bubble, which does not progress when RNAPII is stalled, together with direct interactions between XPG and the...

Worms know bad food when they smell it

...toxic variety of bacteria, however, showed a clear preference for E. coli over the pathogen they were familiar with. The researchers went on to show that it did not take a lifetime of exposure to a toxic food source for the worms to learn to avoid it. In fact, just four hours in the presence of P. aerugino...

Have a taste for fat? Yes! A sensor in the mouth promotes preference for fatty foods

... inactivation fully abolishes both the spontaneous preference for fat and the changes in gastrointenstinal secre...this report provides insight into the basis of our preference for fat and may help us devise better strategies to address the addictive potential of dietary fat. ...

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