Female ticks have market on gluttony

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Unfed and engorged tick. Credit: Professor Frans Jongejan University of Utrecht Netherlands and University of Pretoria Republic of South Africa.
Unfed and engorged tick. Credit: Professor Frans Jongejan, University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and University of Pretoria, Republic of South Africa.

Sex makes you fat. If you're a female tick, that is. The "truly gluttonous" female ixodid tick increases her weight an astounding 100 times her original size after she mates, so a University of Alberta researcher investigated what it is about copulation that triggers such a massive weight gain.


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