Heritability, evolvability, phenotypic plasticity and temporal variation in sperm-competition success of Drosophila melanogaster

Sperm-competition success (SCS) is seen as centrally important for evolutionary change: superior fathers sire superior sons and thereby inherit the traits that make them superior. Additional hypotheses, that phenotypic plasticity in SCS and sperm ageing explain variation in paternity, are less considered. Even though various alleles have individually been shown to be correlated with variation in SCS, few studies have addressed the heritability, or evolvability, of overall SCS. Those studies that have, found low or no heritability and have not examined evolvability. They have further not excluded phenotypic plasticity, and temporal effects on SCS, despite their known dramatic effects on sperm function. In Drosophila melanogaster, we found that both standard components of sperm competition, sperm defence and sperm offence, showed non-significant or insignificant heritability across several offspring cohorts. Instead, our analysis revealed, for the first time, the existence of phenotypic p...

精子竞争成功率（Sperm-competition success, SCS）被视为进化改变的核心影响因素：优势父本可产生优势子代，从而继承使其自身具备优势的相关性状。另有假说认为，精子竞争成功率的表型可塑性（phenotypic plasticity）与精子衰老（sperm ageing）可解释父权比例的差异，但此类假说鲜少得到研究关注。尽管已有多项研究证实单个等位基因与精子竞争成功率的变异存在相关性，但针对整体精子竞争成功率的遗传力（heritability）或进化潜能（evolvability）的研究仍寥寥无几。已开展的相关研究要么未检测到显著的遗传力，要么仅发现极低水平的遗传力，且均未对进化潜能进行分析；此外，尽管表型可塑性与时间效应对精子功能具有明确的显著影响，但现有研究均未排除这两类因素对精子竞争成功率的干扰。在黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）中，我们的研究发现，精子竞争的两个核心组分——精子防御（sperm defence）与精子进攻（sperm offence）——在多个子代队列中均未表现出显著的遗传力。取而代之的是，我们的分析首次揭示了表型父权……