It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: FauxMulder
Please enjoy some weird animal facts to help move along this slow boring day.
A group of lemurs is called a "conspiracy". Maybe ATS needs a mascot.
The biological processes and adaptive advantages of sex change has fascinated scientists for decades and the ecological and evolutionary contexts in which it occurs is now quite well studied and understood. The dominant theory as to why it occurs is known as the size advantage model. According to this model, changing sex is adaptive if your reproductive value (the number of offspring you can produce) is greater when you are a female when small, but a male when you are older and hence larger (as in the Kobudai) or vice versa. So by changing sex, lifetime reproductive success is maximized (the combined number of offspring you produce as a female and then a male or the other way round). Whether or not a species in protandrous or protogynous depends on their mating system and social structure. Protogyny – changing from a female to a male – is more common in fish than protandry because many fish have a mating system where large males, because of their superior competitive ability (in fights and contests with smaller males), are able to monopolize females and prevent smaller males from mating with them. Under these circumstances, reproducing initially as a female when small and then changing sex and becoming a male when large is the best strategy in order to maximize the number of offspring you leave in the next generation.
originally posted by: FauxMulder
We need someone good with Photoshop to put tin foil hats on those lemurs.