Dataset Information

Female nutritional condition affects ovarian fluid quality in guppies.

ABSTRACT: Male and female gametes are often embedded in fluids that are produced by gonads and other reproductive tissues. Female reproductive fluids, usually called ovarian fluid (OF), which often constitute a relevant volumetric component of the egg mass, are rich in ions, sugars and proteins, and are involved in several functions, from protecting gametes to facilitating fertilization, and often act as mediators of post-mating sexual selection. Despite their applied and evolutionary importance, we know virtually nothing about the costs of female reproductive fluid production. We investigated the effect of nutritional condition on OF quality by experimentally manipulating the diet of two groups of female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) which were maintained for 20 days either on a restricted diet or had ad libitum access to food. In this species, OF enhances sperm swimming longevity and velocity (a predictor of sperm competition success) and mediates post-copulatory inbreeding avoidance. We found that sperm velocity was significantly lower in the OF of diet-restricted females, indicating that OF quality is dependent on female nutritional condition. Our results demonstrate that OF represents a non-trivial component of female reproductive investment and provides a tool to investigate which OF constituents are involved in modulating OF-sperm interactions and fertilization.

SUBMITTER: Cardozo G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6012689 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Female nutritional condition affects ovarian fluid quality in guppies.

Cardozo Gabriela G Pilastro Andrea A

Biology letters 20180501 5

Male and female gametes are often embedded in fluids that are produced by gonads and other reproductive tissues. Female reproductive fluids, usually called ovarian fluid (OF), which often constitute a relevant volumetric component of the egg mass, are rich in ions, sugars and proteins, and are involved in several functions, from protecting gametes to facilitating fertilization, and often act as mediators of post-mating sexual selection. Despite their applied and evolutionary importance, we know ...[more]

PMID: 29848779

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Project description:Female ungulate reproductive success is dependent on the survival of their young, and affected by maternal resource selection, predator avoidance, and nutritional condition. However, potential hierarchical effects of these factors on reproductive success are largely unknown, especially in multi-predator landscapes. We expanded on previous research of neonatal white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) daily survival within home ranges to assess if resource use, integrated risk of 4 mammalian predators, maternal nutrition, winter severity, hiding cover, or interactions among these variables best explained landscape scale variation in daily or seasonal survival during the post-partum period. We hypothesized that reproductive success would be limited greater by predation risk at coarser spatiotemporal scales, but habitat use at finer scales. An additive model of daily non-ideal resource use and maternal nutrition explained the most (69%) variation in survival; though 65% of this variation was related to maternal nutrition. Strong support of maternal nutrition across spatiotemporal scales did not fully support our hypothesis, but suggested reproductive success was related to dam behaviors directed at increasing nutritional condition. These behaviors were especially important following severe winters, when dams produced smaller fawns with less probability of survival. To increase nutritional condition and decrease wolf (Canis lupus) predation risk, dams appeared to place fawns in isolated deciduous forest patches near roads. However, this resource selection represented non-ideal resources for fawns, which had greater predation risk that led to additive mortalities beyond those related to resources alone. Although the reproductive strategy of dams resulted in greater predation of fawns from alternative predators, it likely improved the life-long reproductive success of dams, as many were late-aged (>10 years old) and could have produced multiple litters of fawns. Our study emphasizes understanding the scale-dependent hierarchy of factors limiting reproductive success is essential to providing reliable knowledge for ungulate management.

Dataset Information

Female nutritional condition affects ovarian fluid quality in guppies.

Publications

Female nutritional condition affects ovarian fluid quality in guppies.

Similar Datasets

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