Journal article
Meta-analysis shows no consistent evidence for senescence in ejaculate traits across animals
- Abstract:
- Male reproductive traits such as ejaculate size and quality, are expected to decline with advancing age due to senescence. It is however unclear whether this expectation is upheld across taxa. We perform a meta-analysis on 379 studies, to quantify the effects of advancing male age on ejaculate traits across 157 species of non-human animals. Contrary to predictions, we find no consistent pattern of age-dependent changes in ejaculate traits. This result partly reflects methodological limitations, such as studies sampling a low proportion of adult lifespan, or the inability of meta-analytical approaches to document non-linear ageing trajectories of ejaculate traits; which could potentially lead to an underestimation of senescence. Yet, we find taxon-specific differences in patterns of ejaculate senescence. For instance, older males produce less motile and slower sperm in ray-finned fishes, but larger ejaculates in insects, compared to younger males. Notably, lab rodents show senescence in most ejaculate traits measured. Our study challenges the notion of universal reproductive senescence, highlighting the need for controlled methodologies and a more nuanced understanding of reproductive senescence, cognisant of taxon-specific biology, experimental design, selection pressures, and life-history.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 16.6MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-024-44768-4
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 558
- Publication date:
- 2024-01-16
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-01-04
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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1601891
- Local pid:
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pubs:1601891
- Deposit date:
-
2024-01-17
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Sanghvi et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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