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Bizarre Sex Organs

By j7uy5 on August 7, 2007.

i-48571c8bf0e39d4822ebf6a97bc743aa-fi-seedbeetle-large.jpg



This
is featured at the title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS
site.  It appears to not have a permanent link, but it
currently is the PNAS Featured Image on their href="http://www.pnas.org/misc/news.shtml">PNAS in the News
page.  The caption:



The
intromittent organ of male seed beetles is armed with sharp spines that
puncture the genital tract of females during copulation. This form of
sexual conflict has led to coevolution between these harmful male
structures and female defense morphologies in this group of insects. Photo
courtesy of Johanna Rönn.



It pertains to this article: href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/26/10921">Coevolution
between harmful male genitalia and female resistance in seed beetles,
by Johanna Rönn, Mari Katvala, and Göran Arnqvist at
the University of Uppsala, Sweden.


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