This article is reposted from the old WordPress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I’ll return with fresh material. Sex is, on the whole ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. This ...

Scientists have discovered how a microscopic organism has benefited from nearly 80 million years without sex. Bdelloid rotifers are asexual organisms, meaning that they reproduce without males.

Long viewed as straitlaced spinsters, sexless freshwater invertebrate animals known as bdelloid rotifers may actually be far more promiscuous than anyone had imagined: Scientists have found that the ...

In 2016, a study suggested that bdelloid rotifers cultivate genetic diversity by sharing DNA among themselves via horizontal transfer. But in work published today (July 12) in Current Biology, a ...

If sex is so great, how has the bdelloid rotifer been able to do without it for 30 million years? That's a puzzle scientists at Cornell University think they have an answer to. But what is a bdelloid ...

In Mother Nature's edition of the TV reality show Survivor, the bdelloid rotifers would probably be the last animals standing. These tiny aquatic creatures can survive high blasts of radiation and ...

Russian researchers have pulled off a feat that sounds closer to science fiction than standard lab work, reviving microscopic “zombie worms” that had been locked in Arctic ice for roughly 24,000 years ...

Bdelloid rotifers are one of the strangest of all animals. Uniquely, these small, freshwater invertebrates reproduce entirely asexually and have avoided sex for some 80 million years. At any point of ...

The bdelloid rotifer is known for its ability to withstand extreme environments. A microscopic multi-celled organism has returned to life after being frozen for 24,000 years in Siberia, according to ...

Bdelloid rotifers are one of the strangest of all animals. Uniquely, these small, freshwater invertebrates reproduce entirely asexually and have avoided sex for some 80 million years. At any point of ...