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Tag Archive for ‘male’

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Hot Chicks, Cool Dudes: How sex can be shaped by temperature

This guest blog entry was written by the 2020 Dr. Dolittle Award recipient, Rosario Marroquín-Flores, a Biology doctoral student currently studying at Illinois State University. The Dr. Dolittle Award is given to a trainee in the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society who submits the best blog entry describing their research project. Congratulations on a well-deserved award for this guest blog:   Hot Chicks, Cool Dudes: […]

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Gynandromorphs

Talking about having a split personality. A recent story from Live Science reported on a half male/half female chimera cardinal that was discovered in Pennsylvania (pictured below). Not only are the bird’s feathers split (red feathers are found among male and tan among female cardinals), typically the brain is also split. This type of a split sexuality is termed gynandromorph. According to the article, this  anomaly has been observed in birds, […]

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Oh, the many things estrogens can do…in males

I came across an article published in Physiological Reviews with a title so irresistible (Estrogens in Male Physiology), I just had to read it. While I knew that males have estrogen, this article impressed me with the numerous things estrogens are associated with, some of which were new to me and highlight how important estrogens are to male reproductive and non-reproductive physiology. As early as the 1930’s researchers discovered that stallions had high […]

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Male hamsters pack on the pounds while females stockpile food for winter

During hibernation common hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) alternate their time between bouts of torpor during which their metabolic rate drops and body temperature is low and arousal during which body temperature is normal. Hibernation allows animals to conserve energy although it is not without costs as it often results in memory deficits, cell damage and reduced immune function. Thus some studies have suggested that animals with sufficient food stores will not undergo hibernation […]

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