Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences (M092), The University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2020 Nov;16(11):20200680. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0680. Epub 2020 Nov 18.
Genetic benefits from mating with multiple males are thought to favour the evolution of polyandry. However, recent evidence suggests that non-genetic paternal effects via seminal fluid might contribute to the observed effects of polyandry on offspring performance. Here, we test this hypothesis using the field cricket . Using interference RNA, we first show that at least one seminal fluid protein is essential for embryo survival. We then show that polyandrous females mated to three different males produced embryos with higher pre-hatching viability than did monandrous females mated with the same male three times. Pseudo-polyandrous females that obtained sperm and seminal fluid from a single male and seminal fluid from two additional males had embryos with viabilities intermediate between monandrous and polyandrous females. Our results suggest either that ejaculate mediated paternal effects on embryo viability have both genetic and non-genetic components, or that seminal fluids transferred by castrated males provide only a subset of proteins contained within the normal ejaculate, and are unable to exert their full effect on embryo viability.
与多个雄性交配带来的遗传益处被认为有利于多雄交配的进化。然而，最近的证据表明，通过精液传递的非遗传父系效应可能有助于解释多雄交配对后代表现的影响。在这里，我们使用蟋蟀来检验这一假设。利用干扰 RNA，我们首先表明至少有一种精液蛋白对胚胎存活至关重要。然后，我们发现与同一位雄性交配三次的单配雌性相比，与三位不同雄性交配的多配雌性所产的胚胎在孵化前的存活率更高。那些从一位雄性获得精子和精液，同时从另外两位雄性获得精液的假多配雌性所产的胚胎的存活率则介于单配和多配雌性之间。我们的研究结果表明，要么是精液介导的对胚胎存活率的父系效应既有遗传成分又有非遗传成分，要么是由去势雄性传递的精液仅提供了正常精液中所含的一部分蛋白质，并且无法对胚胎存活率产生全部影响。
