ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2012
Assessing the potential for egg chemoattractants to mediate sexual selection in a broadcast spawning marine invertebrate.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 89 citations in OpenAlex.
- Per capita sperm metabolism is density dependent.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Pooled it
- Female-mediated selective sperm activation may remodel major histocompatibility complex-based mate choice decisions in humans.Heredity · 2025Article
- Article
- Population density effects on gamete traits and fertilisation dynamics under varying sperm environments in mussels.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Paternal environment effects are driven by female reproductive fluid but not sperm age in an external fertilizer.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Female reproductive fluids 'rescue' sperm from phenotypic ageing in an external fertilizer.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Urban rendezvous along the seashore: Ports as Darwinian field labs for studying marine evolution in the Anthropocene.Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- Ocean acidification alters sperm responses to egg-derived chemicals in a broadcast spawning mussel.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Density-dependent patterns of multivariate selection on sperm motility and morphology in a broadcast spawning mussel.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Female-induced selective modification of sperm protein SUMOylation-potential mechanistic insights into the non-random fertilization in humans.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Genetic incompatibility of the reproductive partners: an evolutionary perspective on infertility.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2021Article
- Article
- Evolutionary consequences of environmental effects on gamete performance.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Indirect parental effects on offspring viability by egg-derived fluids in an external fertilizer.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Sexual selection after gamete release in broadcast spawning invertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- The role of female reproductive fluid in sperm competition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Ovarian fluid proteome variation associates with sperm swimming speed in an externally fertilizing fish.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2020Article
- Post-ejaculation thermal stress causes changes to the RNA profile of sperm in an external fertilizer.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Post-copulatory genetic matchmaking: HLA-dependent effects of cervical mucus on human sperm function.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Chemical signals from eggs facilitate cryptic female choice in humans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In numerous species, egg chemoattractants play a critical role in guiding sperm towards unfertilized eggs (sperm chemotaxis). Until now, the known functions of sperm chemotaxis include increasing the effective target size of eggs, thereby promoting sperm-egg encounters, and facilitating species recognition. Here, we report that in the broadcast spawning mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis, egg chemoattractants may play an unforeseen role in sexual selection by enabling sperm to effectively 'choose' between the eggs of different conspecific females. In an initial experiment, we confirmed that sperm chemotaxis occurs in M. galloprovincialis by showing that sperm are attracted towards unfertilized eggs when given the choice of eggs or no eggs in a dichotomous chamber. We then conducted two cross-classified mating experiments, each comprising the same individual males and females crossed in identical male × female combinations, but under experimental conditions that offered sperm 'no-choice' (each fertilization trial took place in a Petri dish and involved a single male and female) or a 'choice' of a female's eggs (sperm were placed in the centre of a dichotomous choice chamber and allowed to choose eggs from different females). We show that male-by-female interactions characterized fertilization rates in both experiments, and that there was remarkable consistency between patterns of sperm migration in the egg-choice experiment and fertilization rates in the no-choice experiment. Thus, sperm appear to exploit chemical cues to preferentially swim towards eggs with which they are most compatible during direct sperm-to-egg encounters. These results reveal that sperm differentially select eggs on the basis of chemical cues, thus exposing the potential for egg chemoattractants to mediate mate choice for genetically compatible partners. Given the prevalence of sperm chemotaxis across diverse taxa, our findings may have broad implications for sexual selection in other mating systems.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.