ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Hypodermic self-insemination as a reproductive assurance strategy.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Same-Sex Sexual Behavior in Invertebrates: A Systematic Synthesis of Prevalence, Study Type, and Interpretation.Insects · 2026Review
- Article
- Developmental, regenerative, and behavioral dynamics in acoel reproduction.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mating strategy predicts gene presence/absence patterns in a genus of simultaneously hermaphroditic flatworms.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Evolution of sex allocation plasticity in a hermaphroditic flatworm genus.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Mating behavior and reproductive morphology predict macroevolution of sex allocation in hermaphroditic flatworms.BMC biology · 2022Article
- Frequent origins of traumatic insemination involve convergent shifts in sperm and genital morphology.Evolution letters · 2022Article
- Faster Rates of Molecular Sequence Evolution in Reproduction-Related Genes and in Species with Hypodermic Sperm Morphologies.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- RNA-Seq of three free-living flatworm species suggests rapid evolution of reproduction-related genes.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Is the initiation of selfing linked to a hermaphrodite's female or male reproductive function?Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2020Article
- Variation in sex allocation plasticity in three closely related flatworm species.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Experimental evidence for reduced male allocation under selfing in a simultaneously hermaphroditic animal.Biology letters · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Self-fertilization occurs in a broad range of hermaphroditic plants and animals, and is often thought to evolve as a reproductive assurance strategy under ecological conditions that disfavour or prevent outcrossing. Nevertheless,selfing ability is far from ubiquitous among hermaphrodites, and may be constrained in taxa where the male and female gametes of the same individual cannot easily meet. Here, we report an extraordinary selfing mechanism in one such species, the free-living flatworm Macrostomum hystrix. To test the hypothesis that adaptations to hypodermic insemination of the mating partner under outcrossing also facilitate selfing, we experimentally manipulated the social environment of these transparent flatworms and then observed the spatial distribution of received sperm in vivo. We find that this distribution differs radically between conditions allowing or preventing outcrossing, implying that isolated individuals use their needle-like stylet (male copulatory organ) to inject own sperm into their anterior body region, including into their own head, from where they then apparently migrate to the site of (self-)fertilization. Conferring the ability to self could thus be an additional consequence of hypodermic insemination, a widespread fertilization mode that is especially prevalent among simultaneously hermaphroditic animals and probably evolves due to sexual conflict over the transfer and subsequent fate of sperm.
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