Mating Behavior and Ultrastructural Aspects of Copulation in the Rotifer Asplanchna brightwelli

Aloia, Roland C.; Moretti, Richard L.

doi:10.2307/3225241

Cited by 32 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…This appears to be a widespread phenomenon in monogonont rotifers. Males of species of the genus Asplanchna copulate with mictic as well as with amictic females (Whitney 1913;Aloia & Moretti 1973) and so do males of B. calyciflorus and Brachionus angularis (Gilbert 1963) and males of Rhinoglena frontalis (T. Schrö der, unpublished data). The fact that males cannot distinguish between amictic and mictic eggs is puzzling because there would seem to be a large selective advantage of a discrimination, because rotifer males are often limited in their fertile time period or in their number of sperm, or both (Snell & Childress 1987).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precopulatory mate guarding and mating behaviour in the rotiferEpiphanes senta(Monogononta: Rotifera)

Schröder

2003

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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Epiphanes senta is a littoral rotifer species that occurs in temporary waters and displays a mating behaviour which has not, to my knowledge, so far been described for monogonont rotifers. Monogonont rotifers show distinctive periods within their life cycle during which mictic females appear. Mictic females produce haploid eggs that develop into males or into diapausing eggs if fertilized. The females of E. senta are mostly stationary on the substrate while males are more active swimmers. If they encounter eggs with female embryos of their own species, they attend them and mate with the hatching female. Experiments showed that males are able to discriminate between male, female and diapausing eggs. They exhibit a strong preference for female eggs that are only a few hours away from hatching compared with eggs in early developmental stages. Further experiments did not show any significant differences in male attendance of mictic and amictic eggs. It is hypothesized that males judge the age of a female egg by sensing a chemical that is produced by the growing embryo and diffuses through the egg shell. The male mating behaviour is similar to precopulatory mate guarding known from arthropods but it lacks the monopolization of the female by the male.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precopulatory mate guarding and mating behaviour in the rotiferEpiphanes senta(Monogononta: Rotifera)

Schröder

2003

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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“…Interestingly, males are not able to discriminate between eggs of mictic and amictic females. Similarly, males of Asplanchna brightwelli and Brachionus calyciflorus seemed unable to discriminate between mictic and amictic females (Gilbert, 1963;Aloia & Moretti, 1973).…”

Section: Male Mating Behaviormentioning

confidence: 96%

Diapause in Monogonont Rotifers

Schröder

2005

Hydrobiologia

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“…We further showed that males cannot discriminate virgin females from those who have already copulated, nor can they discriminate resting egg hatchlings (always amictic females) from amictic egg hatchlings (amictic or mictic females). Similar male mate choice has been described for other monogonont species including B. calyciflorus (Gilbert, 1963;Gilbert & Walsh, 2005), Asplanchna brightwelli (Aloia & Moretti, 1973), and Epiphanes senta (Schröder, 2003). Male fitness is not only determined by their chemosensory abilities to discriminate potential mates, but also determined by the persistence of male mating behavior.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Mate choice and sexual conflict in Brachionus plicatilis (Rotifera)

et al. 2007

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Male mate choice in Brachionus plicatilis is based on information from coronal receptors and contact chemoreception of a glycoprotein signal on the body surface of females. Male mating behavior is modulated by mating signal quality and strength, which determines male mating persistence and circling intensity. We probe the sensory abilities of males by better resolving their discrimination of female age. Males preferentially initiate mating with young females, but not too young. Males circle 0.2 h old females just hatched from resting eggs only about 1/2 as frequently as 12 h old females. Males are even more discriminating of females with whom they copulate, preferring 3 h old females significantly more than 0.2 h or 6 h old females. In contrast, males cannot distinguish between virgin females and those who have already copulated. Similarly, males circled and copulated with females hatching from resting eggs with equal frequency as those hatching from amictic eggs. The counterpoint to male mate choice is female resistance to mating. When males contact females, the females respond with one of four behaviors: no response, acceleration, foot flipping, or coronal retraction. In 65% of male-female encounters, there was no initial response by females. However, when males began circling females, females accelerated 11.1 times more often than when males were absent. The second type of evasive female behavior was foot-flipping, which tends to knock off males attempting to circle the female. In the presence of circling males, females performed foot-flipping behavior three times more often than in the absence of males. Coronal retraction, where they stop swimming and withdraw their corona, was observed less frequently than acceleration or footflipping, and there was no difference in the presence or absence of males. These data are interpreted in the context of sexual conflict, where the behaviors that optimize male and female fitness differ.

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Mating Behavior and Ultrastructural Aspects of Copulation in the Rotifer Asplanchna brightwelli

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

Precopulatory mate guarding and mating behaviour in the rotiferEpiphanes senta(Monogononta: Rotifera)

Precopulatory mate guarding and mating behaviour in the rotiferEpiphanes senta(Monogononta: Rotifera)

Diapause in Monogonont Rotifers

Mate choice and sexual conflict in Brachionus plicatilis (Rotifera)

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