This Marsupial Dies After Marathon Mating. Now It’s Got Bigger Worries

Antechinus has so much sex over three weeks that males go blind and die, yet it’s climate change that threatens the Australian mammal.

Photograph: A.N.T. LIBRARY/Science Source

What if I told you that in Australia, a mouselike marsupial called antechinus breeds so manically during its three-week mating season that the males bleed internally and go blind, until every male lies dead? And what if I told you that this isn’t the reason the species is facing an existential threat?

Reporting today in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, biologists from University of New England in Australia and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology present troubling evidence that antechinus might be ill-prepared for a warmer world. The researchers set out to look at something called phenotypic plasticity in the yellow-footed antechinus, one of the creature’s 15 known species. Think of your phenotype as your body’s hardware, or physiology: your height and skin color and metabolism. This is in part coded by your genotype, the genetic software that powers the hardware. Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a species to respond to environmental stressors—like temperature swings—by altering their physiology without mucking with all the underlying genetics…

Miscelaneous

This Marsupial Dies After Marathon Mating. Now It’s Got Bigger Worries

This Marsupial Dies After Marathon Mating. Now It’s Got Bigger Worries

MORE THAN 1,500 BEE DANCE MOVES DECODED BY SCIENTISTS

What you need to know about chlorpyrifos

Miscelaneous

This Marsupial Dies After Marathon Mating. Now It’s Got Bigger Worries

MORE THAN 1,500 BEE DANCE MOVES DECODED BY SCIENTISTS

What you need to know about chlorpyrifos

You may also like

NEW SPECIES – Hechtia elegans, ensifolia, medusae, platyphylla and pycnostachys

Dyckia maranhensis – NEW SPECIES

Werauhia maculata – New Species