Male mammals respond to a risk of sperm competition conveyed by odours of conspecific males
Male mammals respond to a risk of sperm competition conveyed by odours of conspecific males
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DOI：
10.1038/nature02845
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发表时间：
2004-09-23
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Ferkin, MH
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
delBarco-Trillo, J;Ferkin, MH
精子竞争发生在雌性与两个或更多雄性交配时，这些雄性的精子在雌性的生殖道内竞争使其卵子受精（1,2）。精子竞争的频繁发生迫使许多物种的雄性发展出不同的策略来战胜竞争雄性的精子（1,3）。一种普遍的策略是雄性在发现精子竞争风险后增加精子投资（一个雄性分配给一个特定雌性的精子总数）（1,3,4）。研究表明，一个雄性在雌性精子池中所占的精子比例与该雄性所产生的后代比例相关（5,6）。因此，通过增加精子投入，雄性可能会使潜在的精子竞争对自己有利（5,7,8）。在这里，我们展示了雄性草地田鼠，宾夕法尼亚田鼠，当它们在另一只雄性田鼠的气味中交配时，增加了它们的精子投入。这种精子投资的增加不是通过增加射精的频率来实现的，而是通过在相同数量的射精中增加精子的数量来实现的。
Sperm competition occurs when a female copulates with two or more males and the sperm of those males compete within the female's reproductive tract to fertilize her eggs(1,2). The frequent occurrence of sperm competition has forced males of many species to develop different strategies to overcome the sperm of competing males(1,3). A prevalent strategy is for males to increase their sperm investment ( total number of sperm allocated by a male to a particular female) after detecting a risk of sperm competition(1,3,4). It has been shown that the proportion of sperm that one male contributes to the sperm pool of a female is correlated with the proportion of offspring sired by that male(5,6). Therefore, by increasing his sperm investment a male may bias a potential spermcompetition in his favour(5,7,8). Here we show that male meadow voles, Microtus pennsylvanicus, increase their sperm investment when they mate in the presence of another male's odours. Such an increase in sperm investment does not occur by augmenting the frequency of ejaculations, but by increasing the amount of sperm in a similar number of ejaculations.