The hidden ageing costs of sperm competition

Ageing and sexual selection are intimately linked. There is by now compelling evidence from studies performed across diverse organisms that males allocating resources to mating competition incur substantial physiological costs, ultimately increasing ageing. However, although insightful, we argue her...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2020-11, Vol.23 (11), p.1573-1588
Main Authors: Lemaître, Jean‐François, Gaillard, Jean‐Michel, Ramm, Steven A., Salguero‐Gomez, Roberto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuarial senescence
Adaptation
Aging
Animals
Biological Evolution
Competition
Costs
Costs and Cost Analysis
Ecology
ejaculate quality
Evolution
Female
life history evolution
Life Sciences
longevity
Male
Males
phenotypic plasticity
Reproduction
reproductive senescence
Seasonal variations
Seminal fluid
Sexual Behavior, Animal
Sexual selection
Sperm
Sperm competition
spermatogenesis
Spermatozoa
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Summary:Ageing and sexual selection are intimately linked. There is by now compelling evidence from studies performed across diverse organisms that males allocating resources to mating competition incur substantial physiological costs, ultimately increasing ageing. However, although insightful, we argue here that to date these studies cover only part of the relationship linking sexual selection and ageing. Crucially, allocation to traits important in post‐copulatory sexual selection, that is sperm competition, has been largely ignored. As we demonstrate, such allocation could potentially explain much diversity in male and female ageing patterns observed both within and among species. We first review how allocation to sperm competition traits such as sperm and seminal fluid production depends on the quality of resources available to males and can be associated with a wide range of deleterious effects affecting both somatic tissues and the germline, and thus modulate ageing in both survival and reproductive terms. We further hypothesise that common biological features such as plasticity, prudent sperm allocation and seasonality of ejaculate traits might have evolved as counter‐adaptations to limit the ageing costs of sperm competition. Finally, we discuss the implications of these emerging ageing costs of sperm competition for current research on the evolutionary ecology of ageing. This article argues that the allocation to sperm competition has been seldom studied in the context of ageing. We demonstrate that the evolutionary process could explain parts of the diversity in male and female ageing patterns observed both within and among species.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.13593