Sperm Cyst "Looping": A Developmental Novelty Enabling Extreme Male Ornament Evolution.

ABSTRACT: Postcopulatory sexual selection is credited as a principal force behind the rapid evolution of reproductive characters, often generating a pattern of correlated evolution between interacting, sex-specific traits. Because the female reproductive tract is the selective environment for sperm, one taxonomically widespread example of this pattern is the co-diversification of sperm length and female sperm-storage organ dimension. In Drosophila, having testes that are longer than the sperm they manufacture was believed to be a universal physiological constraint. Further, the energetic and time costs of developing long testes have been credited with underlying the steep evolutionary allometry of sperm length and constraining sperm length evolution in Drosophila. Here, we report on th

SUBMITTER: Syed ZA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8534658 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature