期刊
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
卷 219, 期 10, 页码 1458-1466出版社
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.134924
关键词
Fertilization ecology; Gamete interactions; Microfluidics; Sperm competition
类别
资金
- National Science Foundation Division of Integrative Organismal Systems [IOS-1121692, IOS-1354159]
- University of Washington Endowed Chair for Excellence in Biology
- National Science Foundation [DGE-1256082]
- Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation Fellowship
- University of Washington Department of Biology Edmondson Award
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [1354159] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Reproductive success fundamentally shapes an organism's ecology and evolution, and gamete traits mediate fertilization, which is a critical juncture in reproduction. Individual male fertilization success is dependent on the ability of sperm from one male to outcompete the sperm of other males when searching for a conspecific egg. Sperm chemotaxis, the ability of sperm to navigate towards eggs using chemical signals, has been studied for over a century, but such studies have long assumed that this phenomenon improves individual male fitness without explicit evidence to support this claim. Here, we assessed fertilization changes in the presence of a chemoattractant-digesting peptidase and used a microfluidic device coupled with a fertilization assay to determine the effect of sperm chemotaxis on individual male fertilization success in the sea urchin Lytechinus pictus. We show that removing chemoattractant from the gametic environment decreases fertilization success. We further found that individual male differences in chemotaxis to a well-defined gradient of attractant correlate with individual male differences in fertilization success. These results demonstrate that sperm chemotaxis is an important contributor to individual reproductive success.
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