Oh, the places they’ll go

Abstract

Among most animals with internal fertilization, females store sperm in specific regions of their reproductive tract for later use. Sperm storage enables prolonged fertility, physical and temporal separation of mating from fertilization and, when females mate with multiple males, opportunities for differential use of the various males’ sperm. Thus, stored sperm move within the female reproductive tract as well as to several potential fates – fertilization, displacement by other sperm or ejection by the female. Drosophila melanogaster is a leading model system for elucidating both the mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of female sperm storage and differential male fertilization success. The prominence of Drosophila is due, in part, to the ability to examine processes influencing sperm movement and fate at several biological levels, from molecules to organ systems. In this review, we describe male and female factors, as well as their interactions, involved in female sperm storage and differential male fertilization success.

The song of the old mother: Reproductive senescence in female drosophila

“…Although female age influences the quantity of sperm transferred by the male, it does not appear to affect the numbers of sperm stored in the seminal receptacle 46 or their viability between young (6 and 8 d pe, respectively) and old (18 and 31 d pe, respectively) females. 55 After mating, females generally remain unreceptive to courting males for 3-4 d (reviewed in 5 ). Receptivity often resumes before all of the sperm stored from previous matings is depleted and female remating creates a situation where sperm from different males are competing for access to ova (sperm competition) and females can influence paternity of those ova (female sperm preference or cryptic female choice).…”

“…The iteroparous pomace fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a well-established model system for studying the processes and regulation of both reproduction and senescence. 2,[5][6][7] However, many laboratory studies characterizing female reproductive physiology or testing hypotheses related to sexual selection focus only on young females in their reproductive prime (e.g., [8][9][10][11][12][13] ) and/or allow both male and female age to increase concurrently. [14][15][16] Since male reproductive physiology also changes with increasing age, 17,18 controlling for male age in experiments helps distinguish the effects of female age, male age, and their interactions, on phenomena associated with reproductive senescence.…”

Last male sperm precedence is modulated by female remating rate inDrosophila melanogaster

“…; Schnakenberg et al. ). With regards to the hypothesized indirect fitness benefits of polyandry described above, if females remate for “better genes,” LMSP benefits both females as well as their last mate, increasing both female and male's reproductive success.…”

Persistent postmating, prezygotic reproductive isolation between populations

“…Postmating, prezygotic isolation in external fertilizers is mostly limited to incompatibilities relating to chemo-attraction between gametes (Weber et al, 2017) and/or gamete interactions at the cell surface (Vacquier & Swanson, 2011). For internal fertilizers, an additional array of potential PMPZ reproductive barriers can act as a result of the complex series of events that take place within the female reproductive tract after mating (Bloch Qazi, Heifetz, & Wolfner, 2003;Orr & Brennan, 2015;Schnakenberg, Siegal, & Bloch Qazi, 2012). In single heterospecific matings, successful fertilization can be decreased or prevented by reduced sperm transfer by males, and/or reduced transport, storage, and viability of hetero-specific sperm in females (Ahmed-Braimah, 2016;Kelleher & Markow, 2007;Kohyama, Matsubayashi, & Katakura, 2016;Larson, Hume, Andrés, & Harrison, 2012;Manier et al, 2013;Reinhardt, 2006;Rose, Brand, & Wilkinson, 2014).…”