Semen production in two rabbit lines divergently selected for 63-d body weight

Brun, Jean- Michel J.- . M.; Theau-Clément, Michèle; Esparbié, Jean; Falières, Jacky; Saleil, Georges; Larzul, Catherine

doi:10.1016/j.theriogenology.2006.07.004

Cited by 19 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…They also evidenced differences in the variability of semen characteristics both between and within bucks. Brun et al (2006) did not find differences in male libido between 2 lines divergently selected for body weight at 63 d, but reported that males from the lighter line had higher ejaculate volume, mass motility and number of ejaculates suitable for AI, but lower sperm concentration than males from the heavier line. In a posterior study, the same lines were compared in fertilising ability and no differences were found (Theau-Clément et al, 2007).…”

Section: Genetic Variation Between Linesmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…In relation to sperm morphology and acrosome membrane functionality, Lavara et al (2012a) concluded that there is an apparent tendency for genes favouring increased daily gain to slightly decrease normal sperm per ejaculate (less sperm with normal acrosome status and more with abnormal forms), but the magnitude of the genetic correlations does not seem to be high .02 for normal acrosome status; 0.25, HPD95%=-0.18, 0.66 for sperm abnormalities). On the other hand, Brun et al (2006) did not find differences in male libido between 2 lines divergently selected for body weight at 63 d, but reported that males from the line with the lowest body weight had higher ejaculate volume, sperm motility and number of ejaculates suitable for AI, but lower sperm concentration than males from the line with the highest body weight. Overall, the total number of sperms per ejaculate was not significantly different between the 2 lines.…”

Section: Genetic Relationship Between Seminal Traits and Male Reprodumentioning

confidence: 90%

“…First, there is a high pre-selection of ejaculates that are used for preparing the doses. The ejaculate rejection rate differs among AI centres but can be as high as 40% (Brun et al, 2002a, b;Theau-Clément et al, 2003;Brun et al, 2006;García-Tomás et al, 2006c). The criterion to determine the suitability of the ejaculate for AI is based on a subjective combination of several quality traits of the ejaculate and the sperm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Breeding programmes to improve male reproductive performance and efficiency of insemination dose production in paternal lines: feasibility and limitations

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reviews the current genetic knowledge on issues related with the efficient use of bucks in artificial insemination (AI). Differences between lines have been found to be relevant in semen production and quality traits not necessarily related to their specialisation as maternal or paternal lines. Accurate heritability estimates indicate that genetic selection to increase semen production by improving male libido and/or reducing the number of rejected ejaculates may not be effective. However, total sperm produced per ejaculate appears to be an interesting trait to select for. Semen pH has shown low to medium heritability estimates and a low coefficient of variation, therefore it is not advisable to attempt improvement by direct selection. In general, sperm motility traits have shown low heritabilities, but the rate of motile sperms per ejaculate has been considered convenient to select for. Morphological characteristics of the spermatozoa have been revealed as medium to highly heritable. There is evidence of high genetic correlations between sperm traits before and after freezing-thawing. There are few studies regarding the estimation of heterosis of seminal traits, but results indicate important and favourable direct and maternal heterosis in crosses between maternal lines. However, this has not been confirmed in a cross between 2 paternal lines. Until now, attempts to find parametric or non-parametric functions to predict ejaculate fertility through seminal characteristics routinely recorded in evaluations have been very unsatisfactory. Hence, it may be necessary to find other semen quality markers or assess some of those currently used in a more precise manner, or closer to the AI time, in order to improve the ability to predict ejaculate fertility. Several seminal characteristics phenotypically correlated to male fertility could be considered as potential traits to select for in order to genetically improve this trait. However, only the semen pH has been checked for this purpose, and results show a low genetic correlation of this trait with male fertility. Other traits can be studied in the future, but bearing in mind that the required experiments will need a large number of bucks for an accurate estimation of the genetic correlation of the trait with male fertility. This means that these experiments will be expensive and difficult to set up. The most common criterion for selecting paternal lines, average daily gain, seems not to be genetically correlated to male fertility and seminal traits. Thus, selection for average daily gain has no detrimental consequences on these traits, and a multi-trait selection, including growth rate and seminal traits directly related to an efficient AI semen dose production, is feasible in paternal lines. The male contribution to fertility after natural mating and after AI with semen doses with high concentration is negligible, although it has been found that under more restrictive AI conditions male contributions to fertility and litter size are low, but high...

show abstract

Section: Genetic Variation Between Linesmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Genetic Relationship Between Seminal Traits and Male Reprodumentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Breeding programmes to improve male reproductive performance and efficiency of insemination dose production in paternal lines: feasibility and limitations

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Immediately after semen collection, pH, volume and mass motility (coded from 0 to 9) were estimated according to Brun et al (2002). Sperm cell motility was analysed from a 2-ml sample after dilution (1 : 40) in Galap (IMV Technologies, L'Aigle, France) using a computer-assisted sperm analysis system (HTMA-IVOS, version 10; Hamilton-Thorne Research, Beverly, MA, USA) according to the set-up parameters of Brun et al (2006). This dilution rate is routinely used with the present CASA system to decrease the frequency of refusal of analyses due to excessively high concentrations, making it possible to limit the handling of the semen before the analysis.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between rabbit semen characteristics and fertilising ability after insemination

Theau-Clément

Ailloud

Sánchez

et al. 2016

Animal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study aimed to analyse the relationship between rabbit semen characteristics and semen fertilising ability after insemination, which is generally found to be weak. Our hypothesis was that using high semen dilutions (1 : 19), non-oestrus-stimulated does, and homospermic inseminations would make it easier to predict semen fertilising ability. Semen characteristics were evaluated on 275 ejaculates of 128 INRA1001 bucks, distributed into five successive batches. A total of 1970 inseminations were performed. The continuous semen variables were subdivided into three classes of similar size to account for any non-linear relationship between semen characteristics and fertilising ability. Mass motility was divided into two classes according to the presence or absence of waves under microscope observation. Libido, the presence or absence of gel, volume, percentage of progressive sperms, curvilinear velocity, beat frequency of the flagellum, and straightness and linearity of sperm movement did not affect fertility, prolificacy or productivity. It was confirmed that mass motility, estimated by visual observation under the microscope, significantly influenced fertility as well as the percentage of motile and of rapid sperms, and the amplitude of lateral head displacement, estimated by a computer-assisted semen analysis system. To a lesser extent, the percentage of motile cells and of rapid cells significantly influenced prolificacy. Consequently, mass motility and the percentage of motile cells significantly influenced rabbit doe productivity (+1 live births/AI when the semen showed at least a beginning of wave movement, or when the percentage of motile cells was >84%). Interestingly, a gain of 1.5 rabbits was observed when the percentage of rapid cells changed from 64% to 79%, whereas productivity significantly dropped beyond 83% of rapid cells, reflecting a non-linear relationship.Keywords: rabbit, semen characteristics, fertilising ability ImplicationsThe relationship between rabbit semen characteristics and semen fertilising ability is generally found to be weak. Nevertheless, our results obtained using a high dilution and homospermic inseminations on rabbit does not stimulated for oestrus show that a simple selection on mass motility allows increasing productivity by one rabbit born alive per insemination, when the semen shows at least a beginning of wave movement. Moreover, computer-assisted semen evaluation provides additional markers of fertilising ability (such as the percentage of rapid sperms, and the amplitude of lateral head displacement) possibly non-linearly related to fertilising ability.

show abstract

“…Unfortunately, due to the high content of prostatic vesicles and other kind of cells other than spermatozoa in rabbit ejaculates (Farrel et al, 1992;Castellini et al, 2006b) this technique does not provide accurate data. However, these ejaculates can be evaluated using fluorescent stains that label only sperm and not extraneous particles (Riedy et al, 1991).Using these fluorescent stains, the sperm concentration can be determined using fluorometry (Theau-Clément and Faliéres; and flow cytometry . The main problem of these techniques is the cost.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics of fresh and frozen-thawed semen traits and their relationship with growth rate in rabbits

García¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The general aim of this thesis was to study the genetic determinism for some traits related to artificial insemination (AI) dose production of fresh and frozenthawed semen, in order to explore the interest and limitation of different strategies for their genetic improvement in a paternal line of rabbits selected for growth rate during the fattening period (28-63 days).In chapter 1, genetic parameters of sperm production traits are estimated as well as the genetic relationship with daily gain (DG). The heritabilities (h 2 ) of the semen traits were 0.13±0.05, 0.08±0.04 and 0.07±0.03 for ejaculate volume (V), sperm concentration (CN) and sperm production (PROD) per ejaculate, respectively. A favourable and moderate genetic correlation was observed between V and DG (0.36±0.34). From this chapter it may be concluded that if a seminal trait is to be included as a selection objective, a useful one could be sperm production, as it is a trait in which both volume and concentration are included.Moreover, there is currently no evidence to suggest that selection for DG in rabbits will affect sperm production adversely.The aim of chapter 2 was to explore the genetic determinism of some sperm quality traits and their genetic relation with the selection criteria of the paternal rabbit line. The heritabilities (h 2 ) of semen quality traits commonly evaluated in a classic spermiogram were 0.18, 0.19 and 0.12 for NAR (%, percentage of sperm with intact acrosome), ANR (%, percentage of sperm abnormalities) and MOT (%, percentage of total motile sperm cells) respectively. We also estimated the h 2 of some motion CASA parameters 0.09, 0.11, 0.10, 0.11, 0.11 and 0.11 for VAP (µm/s; average path velocity), VSL (µm/s; straight-line velocity), VCL (µm/s; curvilinear velocity), LIN (%, linearity index), ALH (µm; amplitude of the lateral head displacement), STR (%, straightness). Genetic correlations between DG and semen traits showed a high HPD95% (interval of highest density of 95%).However there is some consistent evidence of the negativity of the genetic correlations of DG with NAR and MOT (-0.40 and -0.53, respectively).Chapter 3 aims to determine the repeatability and heritability of sperm head characteristics: width (W, μm), area (A, μm2),length (L, μm) and perimeter (P, μm), and explore the relationships between them and with the selection The environmental and male effects that could have an influence on sperm freezability are studied in Chapter 4. Six different traits were evaluated: sperm concentration (CONC, 10 6 spermatozoa/mL), acrosome integrity in fresh (NAR, %) and frozen-thawed semen (Nar-FT, %), sperm motility in fresh (MOT, %) and frozen-thawed semen (Mot-FT, %) and the percentage of viable sperm in frozen-thawed semen (Live-FT, %). In addition, two synthetic traits were computed: the relative reduction of acrosome integrity (Rnar, %) and relative reduction of motility (Rmot, %) after the freezing-thawing process. A multipletrait recursive model was used to analyse the relationships between the semen traits...

show abstract

Semen production in two rabbit lines divergently selected for 63-d body weight

Cited by 19 publications

References 21 publications

Breeding programmes to improve male reproductive performance and efficiency of insemination dose production in paternal lines: feasibility and limitations

Breeding programmes to improve male reproductive performance and efficiency of insemination dose production in paternal lines: feasibility and limitations

Relationships between rabbit semen characteristics and fertilising ability after insemination

Genetics of fresh and frozen-thawed semen traits and their relationship with growth rate in rabbits

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About