4.5 Article

Consistent significant variation between individual males in spermatozoal morphometry

期刊

JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY
卷 254, 期 -, 页码 147-153

出版社

WILEY
DOI: 10.1017/S0952836901000656

关键词

sperm competition; diploid control; haploid conflict; flagellum

类别

向作者/读者索取更多资源

Comparative studies show that variation in sperm morphometry across taxa is associated with the environment in which sperm function, and the species' mating pattern dictating the risk of sperm competition. Accordingly, sperm have evolved to function in a non-self environment tin contrast to somatic cells) and sperm morphometry is predicted to be optimized independently of the individual male producing them, but is the result of selective forces arising directly from the fertilization and competitive environment in which sperm will operate. Males within a population are therefore under stabilizing selection to produce an optimal distribution of sperm sizes. The nature of this distribution was explored using consistent techniques to measure detailed sperm morphometry for 10 species in a range of taxa from insects to humans. Although we expected variance in sperm morphometry to be optimized by every individual male through stabilizing selection at a population or species level, we found the exact opposite; for every species examined there was significant variation between individual males in the total lengths of the sperm they produced. A significant variation is reported between individual males for every species in the sizes of each sperm head, mid-piece and flagellum component. The between-male variation exists consistently in wild, domestic and human populations, subject to a wide range of levels of inbreeding. In gryllid crickets sperm length is shown to be male-specific and is repeatable between successive ejaculates. Between-female variation in ova size (data are presented for trout) is explainable by individual female fecundity optimization strategies; however, the adaptive significance of widespread between-individual variance in male gamete size is counter-intuitive and difficult to interpret, particularly as the limited evidence available shows that sperm morphometry is not condition-dependent or resource-constrained. The differences, however, do suggest negligible influences from haploid expression in the development of sperm morphometry - if haplotypic expression were manifested we would expect more profound Variation within a male's sperm population (to reflect the inherent within-male variance in haplotypes derived from recombination) rather than the significant between-male differences we found that suggests the diploid control of spermatozoal phenotype.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.5
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据