Evolution of larger sperm in response to experimentally increased sperm competition in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Sperm morphology evolves rapidly, resulting in an exceptional diversity of sperm size and shape across animal phyla. This swift evolution has been thought to prevent fertilizations between closely related species. Alternatively, recent correlative analyses suggest that competition among sperm from more than one male may cause sperm diversity, but these hypotheses have not been tested. Here, we test experimentally the effect of sperm competition on sperm-size evolution using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This worm has a three day generation time, which allowed the study to cover many generations. Sperm volume increased nearly 20% over 60 generations in lines genetically induced to have high levels of sperm competition compared with those of control lines. These results show that sperm competition can and does cause morphological evolution of sperm and, therefore, can explain much of the diversity in sperm morphology.