In the sex lives of male worms in the lab, one gene makes a big difference

For tiny nematode worms of the species Caenorhabditis elegans—one of the workhorses of modern biology—males are rare and all but irrelevant in nature. That's because the vast majority of C. elegans individuals are self-fertilizing hermaphrodites. In the laboratory environment, males of the species do turn up with some regularity, and now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 8 have made an intriguing discovery: natural variation in a single gene produces males with excretory pores that attract the sexual attentions of other males.

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