Sperm performance in conspecific and heterospecific female fluid.

ABSTRACT: Divergent sexual selection within allopatric populations may result in divergent sexual phenotypes, which can act as reproductive barriers between populations upon secondary contact. This hypothesis has been most tested on traits involved in precopulatory sexual selection, with less work focusing on traits that act after copulation and before fertilization (i.e., postcopulatory prezygotic traits), particularly in internally fertilizing vertebrates. However, postcopulatory sexual selection within species can also drive trait divergence, resulting in reduced performance of heterospecific sperm within the female reproductive tract. Such incompatibilities, arising as a by-product of divergent postcopulatory sexual selection in allopatry, can represent reproductive barriers, analogous to specie

SUBMITTER: Cramer ER 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4733106 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature