magazines that have caught up to me
Jul. 16th, 2005 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabSo I'm reading 4 issues of Science News in a row, which definitely scrambles the brain. Herewith what I consider the highlights:
1. It appears that for at least one species of fire ants, the males and females are actually separate species. How can this work, you ask? Males cannot, after all, reproduce themselves alone. Well, apparently the daughters are all clones of their mother, and the sons are clones of their father. How this is accomplished seems to be that when sperm arrive at the eggs, if it's a female sperm, it acts only as a catalyst, and the egg absorbs none of the sperm genes; all the sperm does is stimulate the egg to develop into a clone of the egg-layer. If the sperm is a male sperm, then it acts more like a virus: it enters the egg, tosses out the queen's genes, and the egg develops using only the male's genes, thus turning into a clone of the father. Is that weird, or what? (And shades of John Wyndham!!)
2. Ready to eat salad greens in bags contain a whole lot of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I will cross-post this info to the rabbit communities.
1. It appears that for at least one species of fire ants, the males and females are actually separate species. How can this work, you ask? Males cannot, after all, reproduce themselves alone. Well, apparently the daughters are all clones of their mother, and the sons are clones of their father. How this is accomplished seems to be that when sperm arrive at the eggs, if it's a female sperm, it acts only as a catalyst, and the egg absorbs none of the sperm genes; all the sperm does is stimulate the egg to develop into a clone of the egg-layer. If the sperm is a male sperm, then it acts more like a virus: it enters the egg, tosses out the queen's genes, and the egg develops using only the male's genes, thus turning into a clone of the father. Is that weird, or what? (And shades of John Wyndham!!)
2. Ready to eat salad greens in bags contain a whole lot of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I will cross-post this info to the rabbit communities.
