IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v16y2005i5p825-833.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Paternity in mallards: effects of sperm quality and female sperm selection for inbreeding avoidance

Author

Listed:
  • Angelika G. Denk
  • Alois Holzmann
  • Anne Peters
  • Etiënne L.M. Vermeirssen
  • Bart Kempenaers

Abstract

Postcopulatory processes might play an important role in sexual selection. In theory, fertilization success could be controlled by females via selection of particular sperm within their reproductive tract, or it could be determined by sperm competition per se. In practice, these two mechanisms are difficult to disentangle. To assess the relative importance of both mechanisms we used artificial insemination in combination with measurements of sperm quality (swimming speed and motility) in mallards. In this species, females often lack behavioral control over copulations and hence may use postcopulatory mechanisms to optimize their reproductive output. One important factor affecting female fitness may be selection of genetically compatible males. To investigate the influence of sperm quality and parental relatedness on paternity we inseminated 12 groups of related females with a sperm mixture containing equal numbers of sperm from a brother and from an unrelated male. Paternity was independent of the relatedness of the siring male to the female but was significantly affected by long-term sperm swimming speed and motility. No interaction between relatedness and sperm quality on paternity was observed. These results suggest that female mallards are not able to select sperm on a purely genetic basis and emphasize the importance of sperm quality in gaining paternity. Copyright 2005.

Suggested Citation

  • Angelika G. Denk & Alois Holzmann & Anne Peters & Etiënne L.M. Vermeirssen & Bart Kempenaers, 2005. "Paternity in mallards: effects of sperm quality and female sperm selection for inbreeding avoidance," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 16(5), pages 825-833, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:16:y:2005:i:5:p:825-833
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/ari065
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:16:y:2005:i:5:p:825-833. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.