ArticleDie Naturwissenschaften2009
No evidence for sperm priming responses under varying sperm competition risk or intensity in guppies.
Article in Die Naturwissenschaften, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Testing for age-dependent effects of dietary restriction on the strength of condition dependence in ejaculate traits in the guppy (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Personality, sperm traits and a test for their combined dependence on male condition in guppies.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Sperm competition and fertilization mode in fishes.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Predictors of male insemination success in the mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki).Ecology and evolution · 2015Article
- Multivariate selection drives concordant patterns of pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection in a livebearing fish.Nature communications · 2015Article
- The expression of pre- and postcopulatory sexually selected traits reflects levels of dietary stress in guppies.PloS one · 2014Article
- The effects of perceived mating opportunities on patterns of reproductive investment by male guppies.PloS one · 2014Article
- Condition-dependent expression of pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits in guppies.Ecology and evolution · 2013Article
- Ovarian fluid mediates the temporal decline in sperm viability in a fish with sperm storage.PloS one · 2013Article
- It's all in your head: the role of quantity estimation in sperm competition.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2012Review
- Patterns of genetic variation and covariation in ejaculate traits reveal potential evolutionary constraints in guppies.Heredity · 2011Article
- Quantitative genetic evidence that males trade attractiveness for ejaculate quality in guppies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Female presence influences sperm velocity in the guppy.Biology letters · 2009Article
- Effects of inbreeding and elevated rearing temperatures on strategic sperm investment.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sperm competition theory predicts that males should tailor their investment in ejaculates according to the number of rival males competing to fertilize a female's eggs. Research spanning several taxa supports this prediction by showing that males are often sensitive to the level of sperm competition and adjust their investment in sperm numbers accordingly. More recent work has revealed that males may also tailor the quality of sperm according to the number of males competing for fertilization. Here I test for both effects in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in an experiment that simultaneously evaluates the risk and intensity models of sperm competition. The experiment determined whether male guppies adjust the number (stripped ejaculate size) and quality (sperm velocity and viability) of sperm that are primed over a 3-day period according to experimental changes in the perceived level of sperm competition. A total of 136 focal males were initially stripped of all retrievable sperm and assayed for these sperm traits before being allocated at random to one of four treatments simulating different levels of sperm competition risk and intensity. During the 3-day treatment phase, focal males had visual and olfactory access to a sexually receptive (initially virgin) female maintained with different numbers of stimulus males to simulate variation in the risk and intensity of sperm competition. Following this, males were assayed again for the sperm traits. Contrary to predictions, there was no significant change in any of the measured variables among treatments, although qualitatively the patterns for sperm velocity and viability did conform to expectation. The lack of any trend for the number of sperm primed was unequivocal and future work examining the effects of sperm competition on sperm production should focus on whether males differentially allocate sperm numbers among matings that differ in the level of sperm competition.
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