Development of a sperm cryopreservation protocol for the Argentine black and white tegu (Tupinambis merianae)

Initial collection, characterization, and storage of tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) sperm offers insight into their unique reproductive system

“…carried out on reptiles often involve euthanizing animals and collecting sperm from the male's reproductive tract [48][49][50][51][52][53]. However, tuatara are taonga (treasure) to New Zealand's indigenous Māori people, who retain guardianship over taonga within their rohe (territory) [54].…”

Kinematic and head morphometric characterisation of spermatozoa from the Brown Caiman (Caiman crocodilus fuscus)

“…In the case of the Leopard tortoise, values for total sperm motility indicate there is a large amount of variability ranging from 10% to 80%, which may indicate adaptation of sperm motility when there is sperm competition occurring (Gist et al, 2000;Zimmerman and Mitchell, 2017) that could also be related to semen collection success or technique. Sperm motility and kinematic variables have been reported in other reptiles, including corn snakes (Fahrig et al, 2007), lizards (Aranha et al, 2008;Blengini et al, 2014;López Juri et al, 2018), green iguanas (Zimmerman et al, 2013), turtles (Gist et al, 2000), black and white tegu lizards (Tupinambis merianae) (Young et al, 2017) but the number of frames per second used in some of these previous studies were few (30 fps); (Gist et al, 2000).…”

<i>Corrigendum to</i>: Efficacy of short-term cold storage prior to cryopreservation of spermatozoa in a threatened lizard

“…However, these technologies have been based largely on models developed in mammalian livestock and humans (Comizzoli et al 2018), with few taxon-specific protocols existing for non-model vertebrates such as amphibians and reptiles (Lawson et al 2013;Clulow and Clulow 2016;Browne et al 2019;Clulow et al 2019). This is particularly the case for reptiles: despite current estimates that one in five reptilian species is threatened with extinction (Gibbons et al 2000;Böhm et al 2013), there appears to be little to no systematic management of gametes using ARTs to counter the loss of genetic diversity within affected populations (Clulow and Clulow 2016;Young et al 2017). For example, lizards make up over 50% of all known reptiles, with more than 6000 species worldwide (Böhm et al 2013), yet there have been only two reported studies investigating the effects of sperm cryopreservation for this group (Young et al 2017;Campbell et al 2020).…”