Data from: Effects of female-specific selection for reproductive investment on male fertility traits
Data files
Sep 13, 2024 version files 1.27 GB
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10.5061_dryad.x69p8czt5.zip
1.27 GB
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README.md
1.77 KB
Abstract
Despite sharing an autosomal genome, the often divergent reproductive strategies of males and females cause selection to act in a sex-specific manner. Selection acting on one sex can have negative, positive, or neutral fitness consequences on the opposite sex. Here we test how female-limited selection on reproductive investment in Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) affects male fertility-related traits. Despite there being no difference in the size of males’ testes from lines selected for high female reproductive investment (H-line) or low female reproductive investment (L-line), in both lines, the left testis had a greater volume of sperm-producing tissue. Since H-line females have a larger left-side restricted oviduct, this suggests a positive genetic correlation between male and female gonad function, and that internal testis structure is a target of sexual selection. However, despite H-line males having previously been found to have greater fertilisation success in a competitive scenario, we found little evidence of a difference between the lines in sperm number, motility, velocity, length, or the number of sperm that reached the ova. Pre-copulatory cues and/or the role of seminal fluid in sperm motility may thus be more likely to contribute to the H-line male fertilisation advantage in this species.
README: Data from: Effects of female-specific selection for reproductive investment on male fertility traits
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x69p8czt5
Data and Code Responsibility: Chloe Mason
Description of the data and file structure
CSV files with data on various testis and sperm traits measured from a population of Japanese quail selected for high and low female reproductive investment. Each CSV file has a corresponding README file that contains a summary of the data and a description of the column headings.
Digital images of testes used to measure testis volume, testis cross-sections used to measure the volume of sperm-producing tissue and the density of seminiferous tubules, and sperm used to measure sperm morphology, are provided.
Video recordings used for sperm velocity and motility measures are provided.
Code/Software
R scripts containing all analyses used in the main text and Supplementary Material.
Workflow: Code in Dyrad includes 6 scripts. testes.R contains analysis of testis wet mass, dry mass, volume of sperm-producing tissue, and density of seminiferous tubules. Also contains calculations for FDR-corrected p-values for all analyses. conc.motility.R contains analysis on sperm concentration and sperm motility. velocity.R contains the analysis of sperm velocity. morphology.R contains the analysis of sperm morphology. PVL.R contains the analysis of the number of sperm to reach the PVL. plots.R contains scripts for creating the figures in the manuscript and Supplementary Material. Outputs and figures are labelled as they appear in the manuscript/Supplementary Material.
Software: R Version 4.4.0 (2024-04-24)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
Running under: mac0S Monterey 12.1