At-risk female pigs were defined as females having characteristics of at least one of the four subgroups: females with reservices, lactation length (LL) 0-13 days, weaning-to-first-mating interval (WMI) > or = 8 days, and abortion records. These females may have suboptimal reproductive performance. This study examined reproductive performance in at-risk females, and the relationships between at...

When the cost of reproduction for males and variance in female quality are high, males are predicted to show adaptive mate choice. Using Drosophila melanogaster, we test this prediction and show that sperm limited males preferentially mated with young and/or well fed females. The preferred females had higher reproductive output--direct evidence of adaptive precopulatory male mate choice. Our mo...

Sexual identity and mating are linked to virulence of the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. Cells of the alpha mating type are more prevalent and can be more virulent than a cells, and basidiospores are thought to be the infectious propagule. Mating in C. neoformans involves cell-cell fusion and the generation of dikaryotic hyphae, processes that involve substantial changes in cell polar...

Reciprocal and homologous mating experiments between Malaysian Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes were conducted in the laboratory. Two methods were employed, namely an artificial mating technique and a natural cage mating technique. The study demonstrated there exists a strong reproductive isolation between Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus. Insemination occurred in cross-mating experi...

Exposure to mating pheromone in haploid Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells results in the arrest of the cell cycle, expression of mating-specific genes, and polarized growth toward the mating partner. Proteins involved in signaling, polarization, cell adhesion, and fusion are localized to the tip of the mating cell (shmoo) where fusion will eventually occur. The mechanisms ensuring the correct targ...

The effects of the male to female mating ratio on the heterophil to lymphocyte ratio and duration of tonic immobility (indicators of stress and fearfulness, respectively) were analyzed in two different experiments with different group sizes. In Experiment 1, four different mating ratios (1:11, 1:5, 1:3, and 1:1) and 10 different Spanish breeds of chickens were used; each breeding pen had 12 bir...

Agaricomycetes, the mushrooms, are considered to have a promiscuous mating system, because most populations have a large number of mating types. This diversity of mating types ensures a high outcrossing efficiency, the probability of encountering a compatible mate when mating at random, because nearly every homokaryotic genotype is compatible with every other. Here I summarize the data frommati...

INTRODUCTION Within the Cryptococcus neoformans species complex, two species and five serotypes are recognized: C. neoformans (var. grubii, serotype A; var. neoformans, serotype D and a hybrid, serotype AD) and C. gattii (serotypes B and C). Mating types a and alpha are designated by a single locus, with the mating type alpha being most prevalent in serotype A and D strains. OBJECTIVE To eval...

Mating among the immediate products of meiosis (intratetrad mating) is a common feature of many organisms with parthenogenesis or with mating-type determination in the haploid phase. Using a three-locus deterministic model we show that intratetrad mating, unlike other systems of mating, allows sheltering of deleterious recessive alleles even if there is only partial linkage between a mating loc...