Eggs produced by the mature female parasite are responsible for the pathogenesis and transmission of schistosomiasis. Female schistosomes rely on a unique male-induced strategy to accomplish ...

SMBE Journals (Molecular Biology and Evolution and Genome Biology and Evolution) Further analysis of PifA and PifB revealed that they exhibit many of the characteristics of eukaryotic host-associated ...

While most animals reproduce sexually, some species rely solely on females for parthenogenetic reproduction. Even in these species, rare males occasionally appear. Whether these males retain ...

Grape phylloxera -- the insect that nearly wiped out wine production at the end of the 19th century in France -- hijacks a grape vine's reproductive programs to create a leaf gall, which it uses as a ...

Most male yellow crazy ants carry two separate sets of DNA, resulting from sperm and egg cells that don’t mix their genetic material after fertilisation. This means the males are chimeras – ...

Plant responses to herbivore damage vary enormously, but the causes of this variation are not well understood. We examined how both insect feeding style and soil fertility influence the severity of ...

When it comes to reproduction in social insects, nobody competes with the queen. For some time, scientists have known that queen insects give off chemical signals that prevent workers from reproducing ...