Researchers Explain How Rotifers Thrive Despite Forgoing Sex
Posted on February 21, 2010 Comments (1)
Bdelloid rotifers haven’t had sex for at least thirty million years. Most asexual animals are doomed to extinction. The excellent show, Science Friday, looks at the extraordinary adaptations that allow rotifers to thrive sex-free.
The webcast provides a nice overview of the research. Every week Science Friday provides many such interesting reviews of recent scientific research.
Most rotifers are about 0.5mm in length or less, and their bodies have a total of around a thousand cells. This means that their organ systems are a greatly simplified distillation of the organ systems found in the bodies of the higher animals.
A typical rotifer might have a brain of perhaps fifteen cells with associated nerves and ganglia, a stomach of much the same number, an excretory system of only a dozen or so cells, and a similarly fundamental reproductive system. They have no circulatory system. It is an anomaly that despite their complexity, many rotifers are much smaller than common single-celled organisms whose world they share.
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they are able to survive long periods — even perhaps hundreds of years — in a dried or frozen state, and will resume normal behaviour when rehydrated or thawed.
Secondly, they exhibit what biologists call cell constancy — they grow in size not by cell division, but by increase in the size of the cells which they already have.
Related: Bdelloid Rotifers Abandoned Sex 100 Million Years Ago – Fungus-gardening Ant Species Has Given Up Sex Completely – Amazon Molly Fish are All Female – 50 Species of Diatoms
Categories: Life Science, Research, Science, Students
Tags: amazing, cell, cool, Life Science, microbes, nature, Research, Science, science explained, science webcasts, sex, Students, water
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November 23rd, 2011 @ 3:24 am
Scientists have learned mice use stem cells from the fetus to repair damage to the mother in the event of things like heart attacks. And there is evidence people do the same thing…