| Library / English Dictionary |
MATING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of pairing a male and female for reproductive purposes
Example:
the mating of some species occurs only in the spring
Synonyms:
conjugation; coupling; mating; pairing; sexual union; union
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("mating" is a kind of...):
sex; sex activity; sexual activity; sexual practice (activities associated with sexual intercourse)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mating"):
assortative mating (mating of individuals having more traits in common than likely in random mating)
disassortative mating (mating of individuals having traits more dissimilar than likely in random mating)
cross; crossbreeding; crossing; hybridisation; hybridization; hybridizing; interbreeding ((genetics) the act of mixing different species or varieties of animals or plants and thus to produce hybrids)
inbreeding (the act of mating closely related individuals)
service; servicing (the act of mating by male animals)
Derivation:
mate (engage in sexual intercourse)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb mate
Context examples:
A species of diploid fungus in the phylum Ascomycota which is capable of mating but not of meiosis, and is a causal agent of opportunistic oral and genital infections in humans.
(Candida albicans, NCI Thesaurus)
Maintained as an outbred stock until the mid-1980s, then brother x sister mating initiated by A.P. Provoost to produce two strains designated FHH (also known as FHR) and FHL, which differ in hypertension and proteinuria.
(FHH, Rat Strain, NCI Thesaurus)
"Her father was a wolf. It is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in the woods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the father of Kiche a wolf."
(White Fang, by Jack London)
The ratio of genotype frequencies that evolve when mating is random and neither selection nor drift are operating.
(Hardy-Weinberg Distribution, NCI Thesaurus)
As with the genetics that control mating behaviour, these genes enable each butterfly type to maintain its distinctiveness and help ensure long-term survival of the species.
(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)
A team of academics from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, observed the courtship rituals and sequenced the DNA from nearly 300 butterflies to find out how much of the genome was responsible for their mating behaviour.
(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)
