McNamara Kathryn B, Dungan Ashley M, Blackall Linda L, Simmons Leigh W
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Royal Parade, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Centre for Evolutionary Biology & School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Western Australia, Australia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2024 Sep 11;11(9):240734. doi: 10.1098/rsos.240734. eCollection 2024 Sep.
Our understanding of microbial variation in male reproductive tissues is poorly understood, both regarding how it varies spatially across different tissues and its ability to affect male sperm and semen quality. To redress this gap, we explored the relationship between male sperm viability and male gut and reproductive tract microbiomes in the Pacific field cricket, . We selected cohorts of males within our populations with the highest and lowest natural sperm viability and characterized the bacterial microbiota present in the gut, testes, seminal vesicle, accessory glands and the spermatophore (ejaculate) using 16S ribosomal RNA gene metabarcoding. We identified bacterial taxa corresponding to sperm viability, highlighting for the first time an association between the host's microbial communities and male competitive fertilization success. We also found significant spatial variation in bacterial community structure of reproductive tissue types. Our data demonstrate the importance of considering the microbial diversity of both the host gut and reproductive tract when investigating male fertility in wildlife and potentially human clinical settings.
我们对雄性生殖组织中的微生物变异了解甚少，无论是其在不同组织中的空间变化方式，还是其影响雄性精子和精液质量的能力。为了弥补这一差距，我们探究了太平洋田蟋蟀雄性精子活力与雄性肠道和生殖道微生物群之间的关系。我们从种群中挑选出自然精子活力最高和最低的雄性群体，并用16S核糖体RNA基因代谢条形码技术对肠道、睾丸、精囊、附腺和精荚（射精产物）中存在的细菌微生物群进行了表征。我们鉴定出了与精子活力相对应的细菌分类群，首次突出了宿主微生物群落与雄性竞争性受精成功之间的关联。我们还发现生殖组织类型的细菌群落结构存在显著的空间变异。我们的数据表明，在野生动物以及可能的人类临床环境中研究雄性生育能力时，考虑宿主肠道和生殖道的微生物多样性非常重要。
