ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Unravelling anisogamy: egg size and ejaculate size mediate selection on morphology in free-swimming sperm.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Temperature and the progression of developmental milestones in embryogenesis of a marine ectotherm.Open biology · 2025Article
- Coevolution between eggs and sperm of insects.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Female reproductive fluids 'rescue' sperm from phenotypic ageing in an external fertilizer.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Mutagenesis alters sperm swimming velocity in Astyanax cave fish.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Density-dependent patterns of multivariate selection on sperm motility and morphology in a broadcast spawning mussel.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Selection on Sperm Count, but Not on Sperm Morphology or Velocity, in a Wild Population ofCells · 2021Article
- The thermal environment at fertilization mediates adaptive potential in the sea.Evolution letters · 2021Article
- Sexual selection after gamete release in broadcast spawning invertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- How does parental environment influence the potential for adaptation to global change?Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Gamete dimorphism (anisogamy) defines the sexes in most multicellular organisms. Theoretical explanations for its maintenance usually emphasize the size-related selection pressures of sperm competition and zygote survival, assuming that fertilization of all eggs precludes selection for phenotypes that enhance fertility. In external fertilizers, however, fertilization is often incomplete due to sperm limitation, and the risk of polyspermy weakens the advantage of high sperm numbers that is predicted to limit sperm size, allowing alternative selection pressures to target free-swimming sperm. We asked whether egg size and ejaculate size mediate selection on the free-swimming sperm of Galeolaria caespitosa, a marine tubeworm with external fertilization, by comparing relationships between sperm morphology and male fertility across manipulations of egg size and sperm density. Our results suggest that selection pressures exerted by these factors may aid the maintenance of anisogamy in external fertilizers by limiting the adaptive value of larger sperm in the absence of competition. In doing so, our study offers a more complete explanation for the stability of anisogamy across the range of sperm environments typical of this mating system and identifies new potential for the sexes to coevolve via mutual selection pressures exerted by gametes at fertilization.
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