Reproduction

Most species of termites reproduce the old fashioned way. But nature, always looking for more efficient ways to do things, may be in the process of removing unnecessary steps in the process – males. Researchers have now found colonies with no male termites at all, and they seem to be thriving.

​A new study offers one of the most comprehensive examinations to date into a long-running debate, finding that men who wear boxers do indeed have better sperm counts and healthier reproductive hormone levels than their tight underwear counterparts.

Researchers have grown human eggs from their earliest stages to maturity in a laboratory for the very first time. The achievement offers a future for women at risk of infertility, either through illness or medical treatment, to be able to store immature eggs for later fertilization.

A new study from the German Cancer Research Center has revealed that the entire species of Marmorkrebs originate from a single mother crayfish, in a clonal reproduction that may help shed new light on processes in tumor development.

​A large-scale meta-analysis of 185 studies across 40 years has found a more than 50 percent decline in sperm concentration and total sperm count among men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The rate of decline was found to be consistent and is cause for concern if it continues.

Unlike humans, the gender of reptiles such as crocodiles is determined by the temperature during the incubation process. When the mercury rises, their eggs hatch as females. Now, scientists in Australia think they might have finally cracked the code of this decades-long mystery.

​Is sex overrated? The asexual root-knot nematode might think so. It has evolved to reproduce without sex and while this might not sound like a life worth living, it has turned them into far more efficient crop-killing machines than their sexually reproducing cousins.

As unassuming as it might look, the unisexual Ambystoma salamander has been breaking evolution’s rules for millions of years to establish a girls-only lineage. A new study sheds light on the genetic balancing act these lady salamanders perform to survive and thrive.​​

For thousands of years humans have been using a vast array of strange folk contraceptive methods. A team at UC Berkeley recently examined two commonly used traditional plant-based folk remedies and discovered a potentially new mechanism that could lead to non-toxic, non-hormonal contraceptives.

It's a cutthroat world​ out there, and the male cuttlefish is not above using sneaky tactics to fool rivals. But what causes a mild-mannered trickster to morph into a fighter? The answer can be found in the footage below, the first of its kind to capture a male cuttlefish brawl in the wild.​​

​​Rassim Khelifa was standing by a pond collecting insect eggs one day when he noticed something strange. A dragonfly being pursued by another took a dive and crashed to the ground, seemingly dead on the spot, before springing back to life and making a grand escape once the coast was clear.

They’ve been around for the past 300 million years​, outlasting the dinosaurs and outsmarting our attempts to get rid of them​. Now, Japanese researchers have revealed yet another reason why we have been unable to put a dent in their populations: female solidarity.​​