sperm competition selects for sperm quantity and quality in the australian maluridae精子竞争选择在澳大利亚maluridae精子的数量和质量.pdfVIP

Sperm Competition Selects for Sperm Quantity and Quality in the Australian Maluridae Melissah Rowe1,2*, Stephen Pruett-Jones 1 1 Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, 2 National Centre for Biosystematics, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Abstract When ejaculates from rival males compete for fertilization, there is strong selection for sperm traits that enhance fertilization success. Sperm quantity is one such trait, and numerous studies have demonstrated a positive association between sperm competition and both testes size and the number of sperm available for copulations. Sperm competition is also thought to favor increases in sperm quality and changes in testicular morphology that lead to increased sperm production. However, in contrast to sperm quantity, these hypotheses have received considerably less empirical support and remain somewhat controversial. In a comparative study using the Australian Maluridae (fairy-wrens, emu-wrens, grasswrens), we tested whether increasing levels of sperm competition were associated with increases in both sperm quantity and quality, as well as an increase in the relative amount of seminiferous tubule tissue contained within the testes. After controlling for phylogeny, we found positive associations between sperm competition and sperm numbers, both in sperm reserves and in ejaculate samples. Additionally, as sperm competition level increased, the proportion of testicular spermatogenic tissue also increased, suggesting that sperm competition selects for greater sperm production per unit of testicular tissue. Finally, we also found that sperm competition level was positively associated with multiple sperm quality traits, including the proportion of motile sperm in ejaculates a