Laboratoire d'Ecologie et Evolution, CNRS UMR 7625, École Normale Supérieure de Paris, Paris, France.
Proc Biol Sci. 2013 Jun 5;280(1763):20131116. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1116. Print 2013 Jul 22.
In semelparous populations, dormant germ banks (e.g. seeds) have been proposed as important in maintaining genotypes that are adaptive at different times in fluctuating environments. Such hidden storage of genetic diversity need not be exclusive to dormant banks. Genotype diversity may be preserved in many iteroparous animals through sperm-storage mechanisms in females. This allows males to reproduce posthumously and increase the effective sizes of seemingly female-biased populations. Although long-term sperm storage has been demonstrated in many organisms, the understanding of its importance in the wild is very poor. We here show the prevalence of male posthumous reproduction in wild Trinidadian guppies, through the combination of mark-recapture and pedigree analyses of a multigenerational individual-based dataset. A significant proportion of the reproductive population consisted of dead males, who could conceive up to 10 months after death (the maximum allowed by the length of the dataset), which is more than twice the estimated generation time. Demographic analysis shows that the fecundity of dead males can play an important role in population growth and selection.
在孤雌生殖种群中，休眠的生殖银行（例如种子）被认为在波动环境中不同时间保持适应基因型方面很重要。这种隐藏的遗传多样性储存不一定仅限于休眠的生殖银行。通过雌性的精子储存机制，许多多代生殖动物的基因型多样性可能得到保存。这使得雄性可以死后繁殖，并增加看似雌性偏爱的种群的有效大小。尽管在许多生物体中已经证明了长期的精子储存，但对其在野外的重要性的理解非常有限。我们通过对基于个体的多代数据集进行标记重捕和系谱分析，在特立尼达的野生孔雀鱼中展示了雄性死后繁殖的普遍性。生殖种群中有相当一部分是死亡的雄性，它们可以在死后长达 10 个月（数据集允许的最大时间）内怀孕，这是估计世代时间的两倍多。人口统计分析表明，死亡雄性的繁殖力在种群增长和选择中起着重要作用。
