Acquisition of sperm motility and its maintenance during storage in the lizard, Lacerta vivipara

Abstract

Summary. Lizard spermatozoa, which are non-motile in the testis, develop the ability to swim as they pass along the excurrent duct. The addition of caffeine, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor, induced forward motility in spermatozoa from the caput epididymidis and increased the velocity of spermatozoa from the distal part of the epididymis. Caffeine had no effect on the motility of testicular spermatozoa. This suggests that sperm motility in this species is cyclic AMP-dependent but this factor alone is not sufficient to induce testicular sperm motility. In samples from the distal region of the epididymis, sperm motility was maximal in April just after the breeding season and then decreased significantly during the following months. A parallel can be drawn between these data and the levels of testosterone in the plasma. In the lizard, as in mammals, the epididymis may play an important role in the maturation of spermatozoa.

Epididymal Influence on Acquisition of Sperm Motility in the Gekkonid LizardHemidactylus flaviviridis

“…Besides maturation, the posterior segment also acts as site for accumulation, as evident from the considerably high sperm index in this region. On the basis of the present findings and other investigations in H. jluviviridis [4] and L. vivipuru [3] in which tubule and luminal diameters and sperm density have been the greatest, and epithelial height considerably lowest in the posterior region, the posterior region of wall lizard epididymis may be considered histologically as well as functionally a counterpart of cauda epididymis in mammals.…”

“…In reptiles, though the epididymis is not morphologically differentiated as in mammals, remarkable histological changes are reported among anterior, middle, and posterior regions of the lizard species Lacerta vivipara [3] and Hemidactylus jlaviviridis [4]. Histologically, anterior, middle, and posterior segments of epididymis are comparable to caput, corpus, and cauda of mammalian epididymis.…”

In vitro Study of the Spermatozoa Motility in the Lizard Eutropis carinata

“…Since, the earlier studies (L. vivipara, Depeiges and Dacheux, 1985;H. flaviviridis, Nirmal and Rai, 1997) and M. carinata (Aranha et al, 2008) have shown an increase in the percent forward progressive motility of the spermatozoa occurs during their transit from anterior to posterior end of the epididymis, it appears that the epididymal luminal fluid influences the progressive motility on passage through the epididymis.…”

“…There is no regional difference in secretory proteins of epididymal luminal fluid in Hemiductylus flaviviridis (Nirmal and Rai, 2000) whereas, it exists in Lacerta vivipara (Depeiges and Dacheux, 1985) and Mabuya carinata (Aranha et al, 2006). In M. carinata, the whole epididymal and the vas deferens Int.…”

Characterization and androgenic regulation of major mRNAs coding for epididymal proteins in a lizard (Lacerta vivipara)

“…One-dimensional electrophoresis has made it possible to characterize a major band of Mr 19 000, called the L protein (Depeiges & Dufaure, 1981); its synthesis is androgen-dependent (Depeiges et al, 1981a). With an anti-L protein immunoserum, the presence of this protein was detected on the spermatozoa (Depeiges & Dufaure, 1983), which undergo epididymal maturation in this species (Depeiges & Dacheux, 1985) as in mammals.…”