Resolving variation in the reproductive tradeoff between sperm size and number

Simone Immler, Scott Pitnick, Geoff A. Parker, Kate L. Durrant, Stefan Lüpold, Sara Calhim, Tim R. Birkhead

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

144 Scopus citations

Abstract

Spermatozoa are amongst the most variable cells, and three factors are thought to account for this variation in design: fertilization mode, phylogeny, and postcopulatory sexual selection. In addition, it has long been assumed that a tradeoff exists between sperm size and number, and although postcopulatory sexual selection affects both traits, empirical evidence for a tradeoff has so far been elusive. Our recent theoretical model predicts that the nature of a direct tradeoff between sperm size and number varies with sperm competition mechanism and sperm competition risk. We test these predictions using a comparative approach in two very different taxa with different sperm competition mechanisms: passerine birds (mechanism: simple raffle) and Drosophila fruit flies (sperm displacement). Weshow that in both groups, males increase their total ejaculate investment with increasing sperm competition risk, but whereas passerine birds allocate disproportionately to sperm number, drosophilids allocate disproportionately to sperm size. This striking difference between the two groups can be at least partly explained by sperm competition mechanisms depending on sperm size relative to the size of the female reproductive tract: in large animals (passerines), sperm numbers are advantageous in sperm competition owing to dilution inside the female tract, whereas in small animals (drosophilids), large spermare advantageous for physical competition (sperm displacement). Our study provides two important results. First, we provide convincing evidence for the existence of a sperm size-number tradeoff. Second, we show that by considering both spermcompetitionmechanism and dilution, can we account for variation in sperm size between different taxa.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)5325-5330
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume108
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 29 2011

Keywords

  • Dilution effect
  • Sperm allocation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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