PREMISE OF THE STUDY In dioecious species, selection should favor different leaf sizes in males and females whenever the sexes experience distinct environments or constraints such as different costs of reproduction. We took advantage of a long-term experimental study of Ocotea tenera (Lauraceae), a dioecious understory tree in Monteverde, Costa Rica, to explore leaf size differences between gen...

Information on quality characteristics of forage species help the range managers to select a suitable grazing program that minimizes the damages to vegetation. Water Soluble Carbohydrates (WSC) -the main photosynthetic products- are stored in various plant parts and are more likely to be consumed when plants require them. In order to investigate the changes of WSC in distinguishable organs in t...

Background Although tensile force on an immature tibial tuberosity is considered the main cause of Osgood-Schlatter disease (OSD), the relationship between bony maturity and the pathogenesis of OSD remains obscure. Purpose To survey the bone maturation process of the tibial tuberosity by age and sex and clarify its relationship to OSD. Study Design Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, ...

The changes in yields and nutritive composition of whole crop wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) during maturation and effects of maturity stage and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) inoculants on the fermentation quality and aerobic stability were investigated under laboratory conditions. Whole crop wheat harvested at three maturation stages: flowering stage, milk stage and dough stage. Two strains of LAB ...

We examined 170 museum specimens of the southern African gekkonid lizard Homopholis wahlbergii, to quantify sexual dimorphism, male and female reproductive cycles and diet. The largest male and female we recorded were 116 and 119 mm snout–vent length (SVL) respectively. We compared SVL, tail length, head length, head width and eye diameter and found no evidence of sexual dimorphism in any of th...

the present research aimed to study the growth and reproductive parameters of common kilka clupeonella caspia in southern caspian sea in 2010. after measuring the length and weight of 3774 samples, they were dissected, sex determined and female gonads were weighed. sexual maturity classification was carried out based on six stages. age was determined using sagitta otoliths. length-weight relati...

Introduction: Dental maturation is a useful indicator of growth. Moreover, skeletal maturation is assessed by the cervical vertebrae maturation (CVM) stages, using lateral cephalometric radiographs. This study aimed to investigate the association between Demirjian’s method and CVM stages and also to analyze the diagnostic performance of the dental maturation stages for identification of ...

BACKGROUND Antimalarial interventions designed to impact on the transmissible sexual stages of Plasmodium falciparum are evaluated by measurement of peripheral gametocyte carriage in vivo and infectivity to mosquitoes. Drug or vaccine-elicited effects may differentially affect the relative abundance of mature male and female sexual forms, and this can be measured by estimation of sex ratios bef...

Maqui (Aristotelia chilensis [Molina] Stuntz, Elaeocarpaceae) is a Chilean native species which produces small berries that are mainly collected from the wild. The health benefits of maqui fruit are attributed to their high polyphenol content as well as their wide variety of anthocyanins and flavonols. One of the main factors that affect the polyphenol content in fruit is the maturity stage at ...

Sexually dimorphic phenotypes are thought to largely result from sex differences in gene expression, and genes with sex-biased expression have been well characterized in adults of many species. Although most sexual dimorphisms manifest in adults, many result from sex-specific developmental trajectories, implying that juveniles may exhibit significant levels of sex-biased expression. However, it...