BACKGROUND AND AIMS High alpine environments are characterized by short growing seasons, stochastic climatic conditions and fluctuating pollinator visits. These conditions are rather unfavourable for sexual reproduction of flowering plants. Apomixis, asexual reproduction via seed, provides reproductive assurance without the need of pollinators and potentially accelerates seed development. There...

Aim We provide a new quantitative analysis of lizard reproductive ecology. Comparative studies of lizard reproduction to date have usually considered life-history components separately. Instead, we examine the rate of production (productivity hereafter) calculated as the total mass of offspring produced in a year. We test whether productivity is influenced by proxies of adult mortality rates su...

Stolons and rhizomes are modified stems for vegetative reproduction. While stolons grow above the ground, beneath ground. maintain genotypes of hybrids hence invaluable agricultural propagation. Diploid strawberry is a model studying stolon development. At axillary meristems, gibberellins MADS box gene SOC1 promote formation, while DELLA repressor inhibits Photoperiod regulates formation throug...

This study draws on a comparative framework to evaluate the translation of political implications in three Persian translations of the novellaAnimal Farm (by George Orwell), using  Fairclough’scritical discourse analysis (CDA) model. The study regards political implications and ideologies as a mode of background knowledge shared by writers and audiences in the source language. Fairclough’s mode...

Some remarkable animal species require an opposite-sex partner for their sexual development but discard the partner’s genome before gamete formation, generating hemi-clonal progeny in a process called hybridogenesis. Here, we discovered similar phenomenon, termed pseudosexual reproduction, basidiomycete human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans , where exclusive uniparental inheritance of ...

The fungus Cryptococcus neoformans can undergo a-α bisexual and unisexual reproduction. Completion of both sexual reproduction modes requires similar cellular differentiation processes and meiosis. Although bisexual reproduction generates equal number of a and α progeny and is far more efficient than unisexual reproduction under mating-inducing laboratory conditions, the α mating type dominates...

Diversification of reproductive mode is a major theme in animal evolution. Vertebrate reproduction began in water, and terrestrial eggs evolved multiple times in fishes and amphibians and in the amniote ancestor. Because oxygen uptake from water conflicts with water retention in air, egg adaptations to one environment typically preclude development in the other. Few animals have variable reprod...