Sexual reproduction is costly to organisms that depend on it, like humans. In contrast, bacteria reproduce by asexual reproduction, which is more efficient but doesn't allow genomic mixing, making ...

Say a thank you to the pathogens and parasites of the world: Without them, there might be no such thing as sex. A new study finds that in organisms that can reproduce alone or with a partner, sexual ...

One species of bacteria seems to get many of the perks of sexual reproduction without actually having sex, a new study finds. Different strains of bacteria called Mycobacterium smegmatis swap large, ...

Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have imaged a heritable form of bacterial symbiosis inside the ...

Explore the Red Queen hypothesis, revealing how sexual reproduction gives an evolutionary edge against parasites. In the 1970s, several researchers built mathematical models of how parasites ...

One species of bacteria seems to get many of the perks of sexual reproduction without actually having sex, a new study finds. Different strains of bacteria called Mycobacterium smegmatis swap large, ...

When Kostas Konstantinidis proved that many microbes — like plants and animals — are organized into species, he upended a long-held scientific belief. Scientists widely believed that bacteria, due to ...

Ostracods, sometimes called seed shrimp, are nearly microscopic, aquatic organisms, inhabiting all types of marine and freshwater environments. Using fluorescence microscopy, the team discovered that ...

Researchers have stumbled on a surprising aphrodisiac for a single-celled organism: a protein secreted by a bacterium. They suggest it’s the first time that bacteria have been found to have a hand in ...