Corley, LS;
Cotton, S;
McConnell, E;
Chapman, T;
Fowler, K;
Pomiankowski, A;
(2006)
Highly variable sperm precedence in the stalk-eyed fly, Teleopsis dalmanni.
BMC EVOL BIOL
, 6
, Article 53. 10.1186/1471-2148-6-53.
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Abstract
Background: When females mate with different males, competition for fertilizations occurs after insemination. Such sperm competition is usually summarized at the level of the population or species by the parameter, P-2, defined as the proportion of offspring sired by the second male in double mating trials. However, considerable variation in P-2 may occur within populations, and such variation limits the utility of population-wide or species P-2 estimates as descriptors of sperm usage. To fully understand the causes and consequences of sperm competition requires estimates of not only mean P-2, but also intra-specific variation in P-2. Here we investigate within-population quantitative variation in P-2 using a controlled mating experiment and microsatellite profiling of progeny in the multiply mating stalk-eyed fly, Teleopsis dalmanni.Results: We genotyped 381 offspring from 22 dam-sire pair families at four microsatellite loci. The mean population-wide P-2 value of 0.40 was not significantly different from that expected under random sperm mixing (i.e. P-2 = 0.5). However, patterns of paternity were highly variable between individual families; almost half of families displayed extreme second male biases resulting in zero or complete paternity, whereas only about one third of families had P-2 values of 0.5, the remainder had significant, but moderate, paternity skew.Conclusion: Our data suggest that all modes of ejaculate competition, from extreme sperm precedence to complete sperm mixing, occur in T. dalmanni. Thus the population mean P-2 value does not reflect the high underlying variance in familial P-2. We discuss some of the potential causes and consequences of post-copulatory sexual selection in this important model species.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Highly variable sperm precedence in the stalk-eyed fly, Teleopsis dalmanni |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2148-6-53 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-6-53 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2006 Corley et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | STRIDER GERRIS-LACUSTRIS, CYRTODIOPSIS-DALMANNI, INTRASPECIFIC VARIATION, SEXUAL SELECTION, FLIES DIOPSIDAE, FERTILIZATION SUCCESS, ARTIFICIAL SELECTION, MATING FREQUENCY, MATE PREFERENCE, FEMALE CHOICE |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/174767 |
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