Sperm morphology and evidence for sperm competition among parrots.

ABSTRACT: Sperm competition is an important component of post-copulatory sexual selection that has shaped the evolution of sperm morphology. Previous studies have reported that sperm competition has a concurrently directional and stabilizing effect on sperm size. For example, bird species that show higher levels of extrapair paternity and larger testes (proxies for the intensity of sperm competition) have longer sperm and lower coefficients of variation in sperm length, both within and between males. For this reason, these sperm traits have been proposed as indexes to estimate the level of sperm competition in species for which other measures are not available. The relationship between sperm competition and sperm morphology has been explored mostly for bird species that breed in temperate zones, wit

SUBMITTER: Carballo L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6852422 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature