Recipe for Monogamy (IMAGE)

University of Texas at Austin

Recipe for Monogamy

Caption

At least five times during the past 450 million years, evolution used a kind of universal formula for turning animals monogamous -- turning up the activity of some genes (red) and turning down others (blue) in the brain. Researchers studied five pairs of closely related species - four mammals, two birds, two frogs and two fish -- each with one monogamous and one non-monogamous member. They found 24 genes with similar expression patterns in monogamous males.

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University of Texas at Austin

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