Effect of Industrial Pollution of the Environment on the Frequency of Abnormal Spermatozoa in the Bank Vole, Myodes glareolus

Discrimination of the two subspecies of Microtus hartingi(Rodentia: Arvicolinae) by shape and linear features of the spermatozoon

“…The gins of the tail are especially common in M. h. hartingi (61%) but spermatozoa heads separated from the tails are more typical for M. h. lydius (58%). The age of males may have increased an effect on the occurrence of abnormal spermatozoa head and tails; old males have more defect spermatozoa (Smirnov & Davidova, 2018). The males chosen for our study were at the most reproductive age (4-6 months old) and had an offspring; therefore, we speculate that variations of the head shape cannot be a result of the age impact.…”

“…The degradation of spermatozoa occurs in heavy pollution conditions leading to an increase in the proportion of spermatozoa with defects (Wyrobek & Bruce, 1975;Miska-Schramm et al, 2017). At the same time, in other studies such effect of chemicals was not found (Ieradi et al, 2003;Smirnov & Davidova, 2018). Changes of spermatozoa morphology may also be a result of genetic alterations such as Y chromosome deletions (Krzanowska et al, 1995;Ward & Burgoyne, 2006) and mutations (Mendoza-Lujambio et al, 2002).…”