Why Sex With Creatures from the Future Is a Bad Idea
Brine Shrimp Hans HillewaertResearchers test sexual adaptations in time-traveling brine shrimp When time travel finally becomes possible, we might want to think twice about getting it on. According to a new study on tiny shrimp (Artemia franciscana), sex with partners from a different time could kill you. Researchers at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE) in Montpellier, France, preserved brine shrimp eggs from various generations, and then reanimated them with water. Nicolas Rode and colleagues mated pairs of brine shrimp that had been reanimated from eggs preserved since 1985, 1996 and 2007, a period representing roughly 160 generations. They found that females that mated with males from the past or future died off sooner than those that mated with their own generation. The longer the time-shift, the earlier they died: The 22-year time difference shortened female lifetimes by 12 percent; the effect was 3 percent for the 11-year...