10.5061/DRYAD.SB6SD80
Thorburn, Doko-Miles J.
University of London
Knell, Robert J.
University of London
Parrett, Jonathan M.
Queen Mary University of London
Data from: Sperm morph and remating frequency in the Indian meal moth,
Plodia interpunctella
Dryad
dataset
2018
Apyrene sperm
Female receptiveness
Plodia interpunctella
Sperm heteromorphy
2018-07-27T16:36:20Z
2018-07-27T16:36:20Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0304
14885 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
All Lepidoptera produce two sperm types: normal, nucleated ‘eupyrene’
sperm and anucleate ‘apyrene’ sperm. One hypothesis for the evolution of
apyrene sperm suggests that they act to reduce female remating rate.
Apyrene sperm require less resources to produce than do eupyrene sperm,
and could delay remating by females by acting as a “cheap filler”, packing
the spermatheca and thereby reducing receptivity. This would reduce the
risk of sperm competition, giving a potential adaptive advantage to the
male producing these sperm. This leads to the prediction that the
probability of a female remating should correlate with the number of
stored apyrene sperm, which has previously been supported by experiments
using the Green-Veined White butterfly, Pieris napi. We repeated this
experiment using the Indian meal moth, Plodia interpunctella. We find that
in this species eupyrene, not apyrene sperm number is the best predictor
of female remating probability, indicating that the “cheap filler”
hypothesis for the function of apyrene sperm is not well supported for
this species.
Plodia sperm dataSee readme file for full description of data filealldata.txt