ArticleNature2016
How sexual selection can drive the evolution of costly sperm ornamentation.
Article in Nature, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
66 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- How sperm competition shapes the evolution of testes and sperm: a meta-analysis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Pooled it
- Rapid protamine evolution suppresses meiotic drive inScience advances · 2026Article
- Orthologs of an essential orphan gene vary in their capacities for function and subcellular localization in Drosophila melanogaster.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Beyond the Black Box: Reproductive Strategies of the Black Soldier Fly as a Model for Bridging Evolutionary Biology and Applied Entomology.Evolutionary applications · 2026Review
- Characterization of the post-mating responses of Drosophila hydei, a species that lacks Sex-Peptide.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Exploring the versatility ofFly · 2025Review
- A metabolic hub in ciliary and flagellar motion.Nature structural & molecular biology · 2025Article
- An orphan gene is essential for efficient sperm entry into eggs in Drosophila melanogaster.Genetics · 2025Article
- Long-sperm precedence and other cryptic female choices in Drosophila melanogaster.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Genomics of a sexually selected sperm ornament and female preference in Drosophila.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Male medaka continue to mate with females despite sperm depletion.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Sperm competition intensity shapes divergence in both sperm morphology and reproductive genes across murine rodents.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2024Article
- An orphan gene is essential for efficient sperm entry into eggs inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Review
- Gene Protein Sequence Evolution Can Predict the Rapid Divergence of Ovariole Numbers in the Drosophila melanogaster Subgroup.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Coevolution between eggs and sperm of insects.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Male allocation to ejaculation and mating effort imposes different life history trade-offs.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Mitochondrial Differentiation during Spermatogenesis: Lessons fromInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Heat stress reveals a fertility debt owing to postcopulatory sexual selection.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Thermal Stress and Adult Fitness in a Drosophila suzukii Neotropical Propagule.Neotropical entomology · 2023Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Post-copulatory sexual selection (PSS), fuelled by female promiscuity, is credited with the rapid evolution of sperm quality traits across diverse taxa. Yet, our understanding of the adaptive significance of sperm ornaments and the cryptic female preferences driving their evolution is extremely limited. Here we review the evolutionary allometry of exaggerated sexual traits (for example, antlers, horns, tail feathers, mandibles and dewlaps), show that the giant sperm of some Drosophila species are possibly the most extreme ornaments in all of nature and demonstrate how their existence challenges theories explaining the intensity of sexual selection, mating-system evolution and the fundamental nature of sex differences. We also combine quantitative genetic analyses of interacting sex-specific traits in D. melanogaster with comparative analyses of the condition dependence of male and female reproductive potential across species with varying ornament size to reveal complex dynamics that may underlie sperm-length evolution. Our results suggest that producing few gigantic sperm evolved by (1) Fisherian runaway selection mediated by genetic correlations between sperm length, the female preference for long sperm and female mating frequency, and (2) longer sperm increasing the indirect benefits to females. Our results also suggest that the developmental integration of sperm quality and quantity renders post-copulatory sexual selection on ejaculates unlikely to treat male-male competition and female choice as discrete processes.
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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.