The leading hypothesis for the evolution of male genital complexity proposes that genital traits evolve in response to post-insemination sexual selection; that is, via cryptic female choice or sperm competition. Here, we describe a laser ablation technique for high-precision manipulation of microscale body parts of insects, and employ it to discern the adaptive function of a rapidly evolving an...

In animals with internal fertilization and promiscuous mating, male genitalia show rapid and divergent evolution. Three hypotheses have been suggested to explain the evolutionary processes responsible for genital evolution: the lock-and-key hypothesis, the pleiotropy hypothesis and the sexual-selection hypothesis. Here, we determine whether variation in male genital morphology influences fertil...

BACKGROUND The biggest challenge in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) prevention in Africa is the high HIV-1 burden in young women. In macaques, proinflammatory cytokine production in the genital tract is necessary for target cell recruitment and establishment of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection following vaginal inoculation. The purpose of this study was to assess if gen...

The role of sexual selection in fuelling genital evolution is becoming increasingly apparent from comparative studies revealing interspecific divergence in male genitalia and evolutionary associations between male and female genital traits. Despite this, we know little about intraspecific variance in male genital morphology, or how male and female reproductive traits covary among divergent popu...

We have investigated the anterior and posterior compartmental organization of the genital imaginal disc. Unlike the thoracic discs, the genital disc is a compound disc consisting of three primordia--the female genital, male genital, and anal primordia. Here we provide evidence that each primordium is divided into anterior and posterior compartments. Genes that are known to be expressed in compa...

OBJECTIVE Lactobacillus dominates the lower genital tract microbiota of many women, producing a low vaginal pH, and is important for healthy pregnancy outcomes and protection against several sexually transmitted pathogens. Yet, factors that promote Lactobacillus remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that the amount of free glycogen in the lumen of the lower genital tract is an important det...

CONTEXT Although partially anecdotal, some evidence suggests that oral-genital contact is increasingly excluded from young people's notions of what behaviors constitute sex. Such a shift may have implications for STD prevention. METHODS In 2007, a convenience sample of 477 university students participated in a survey that included the question "Would you say you 'had sex' with someone if the ...

An important question in the study of chlamydial genital tract disease is why some women develop severe upper tract disease while others have mild or even "silent" infections with or without pathology. Animal studies suggest that the pathological outcome of an infection is dependent upon both the composition of the infecting chlamydial population and the genotype of the host, along with host ph...

OBJECTIVE To provide recommendations for the management of genital herpes infection in women who want to get pregnant or are pregnant and for the management of genital herpes in pregnancy and strategies to prevent transmission to the infant. OUTCOMES More effective management of complications of genital herpes in pregnancy and prevention of transmission of genital herpes from mother to infant...

OBJECTIVE We introduce our surgical technique in two male genital reconstruction cases out of 15 post-bariatric patients. METHODS At our Department for Plastic Surgery at the University Hospital Magdeburg, 15 patients, 6 male and 9 female, underwent a surgical abdominoplasty after weight loss in 2009. RESULTS The average weight of the 15 patients was preoperatively 197.2 kg and the average ...