The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition

The vast variation observed in genital morphology is a longstanding puzzle in evolutionary biology. Studies showing that the morphology of the mammalian baculum (penis bone) can covary with a male’s paternity success indicate a potential impact of baculum morphology on male fitness, likely through i...

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Autores principales: Winkler, Lennart, Lindholm, Anna K., Ramm, Steven A., Sutter, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8359600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34384348
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-021-01887-6
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author Winkler, Lennart
Lindholm, Anna K.
Ramm, Steven A.
Sutter, Andreas
author_facet Winkler, Lennart
Lindholm, Anna K.
Ramm, Steven A.
Sutter, Andreas
author_sort Winkler, Lennart
collection PubMed
description The vast variation observed in genital morphology is a longstanding puzzle in evolutionary biology. Studies showing that the morphology of the mammalian baculum (penis bone) can covary with a male’s paternity success indicate a potential impact of baculum morphology on male fitness, likely through influencing sperm competition outcomes. We therefore measured the size (measurements of length and width) and shape (geometric morphometric measurements) of the bacula of male house mice used in previously published sperm competition experiments, in which two males mated successively with the same female in staged matings. This enabled us to correlate baculum morphology with sperm competition success, incorporating potential explanatory variables related to copulatory plugs, male mating behavior and a selfish genetic element that influences sperm motility. We found that a wider baculum shaft increased a male’s paternity share when mating first, but not when mating second with a multiply-mating female. Geometric morphometric shape measurements were not clearly associated with fertilization success for either male. We found limited evidence that the effect of baculum morphology on male fertilization success was altered by experimental removal of the copulatory plug. Furthermore, neither genetic differences in sperm motility, nor covariation with male mating behavior mediated the effect of baculum morphology on male fertilization success. Taken together with previous findings, the mating-order effects we found here suggest that baculum-mediated stimulation by the first male might be particularly important for fertilization. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-021-01887-6.
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spelling pubmed-83596002021-08-16 The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition Winkler, Lennart Lindholm, Anna K. Ramm, Steven A. Sutter, Andreas BMC Ecol Evol Research The vast variation observed in genital morphology is a longstanding puzzle in evolutionary biology. Studies showing that the morphology of the mammalian baculum (penis bone) can covary with a male’s paternity success indicate a potential impact of baculum morphology on male fitness, likely through influencing sperm competition outcomes. We therefore measured the size (measurements of length and width) and shape (geometric morphometric measurements) of the bacula of male house mice used in previously published sperm competition experiments, in which two males mated successively with the same female in staged matings. This enabled us to correlate baculum morphology with sperm competition success, incorporating potential explanatory variables related to copulatory plugs, male mating behavior and a selfish genetic element that influences sperm motility. We found that a wider baculum shaft increased a male’s paternity share when mating first, but not when mating second with a multiply-mating female. Geometric morphometric shape measurements were not clearly associated with fertilization success for either male. We found limited evidence that the effect of baculum morphology on male fertilization success was altered by experimental removal of the copulatory plug. Furthermore, neither genetic differences in sperm motility, nor covariation with male mating behavior mediated the effect of baculum morphology on male fertilization success. Taken together with previous findings, the mating-order effects we found here suggest that baculum-mediated stimulation by the first male might be particularly important for fertilization. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12862-021-01887-6. BioMed Central 2021-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8359600/ /pubmed/34384348 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-021-01887-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Winkler, Lennart
Lindholm, Anna K.
Ramm, Steven A.
Sutter, Andreas
The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title_full The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title_fullStr The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title_full_unstemmed The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title_short The baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
title_sort baculum affects paternity success of first but not second males in house mouse sperm competition
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8359600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34384348
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-021-01887-6
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