Sperm experience intense and varied selection that dramatically impacts the evolution of sperm quality. Selection acts to ensure that sperm are fertilization-competent and able to overcome the many challenges experienced on their way towards eggs. However, simply being able to fertilize an egg is not enough to ensure male fertility in most species. Owing to the prevalence of female multiple mat...

Storage of sperm inside the female genital tract is an integral phase of reproduction in many animal species. The sperm storage site constitutes the arena for sperm activation, sperm competition and female sperm choice. Consequently, to understand animal mating systems information on the processes that occur from sperm transfer to fertilization is required. Here, we focus on sperm activation in...

Sperm sorting by flow cytometry is a useful technology in the bovine industry, but the conception rates after artificial insemination using sex-sorted sperm are lower than when using the un-sorted sperm. In this study, we have investigated the causes for these low conception rates. We have focused on changes caused by flow cytometry to the glycocalyx, which forms the outermost surface of the sp...

OBJECTIVE To detect human papillomavirus (HPV) in semen and find if sperm washing removes HPV DNA. METHODS Amplification by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect viral DNA sequences in semen samples from 85 volunteers. Forty-five men had historical or clinical evidence of genital HPV infection (study group) and 40 were healthy, clinically HPV-negative semen donors. RESUL...

PCR was compared with culture for the detection of Ureaplasma urealyticum in 50 specimens, including sperm, urine, and prostate secretions, from hospital patients with urogenital infections. Five positive and a further four doubtful diagnoses were made by culture, whereas PCR detected U. urealyticum in 12 samples. PCR also was faster than culturing. The increased sensitivity and shorter time re...

The spermatozoon is the most diverse cell type known and this diversity is considered to reflect differences in sperm function. How the diversity in sperm morphology arose during speciation and what role the different specializations play in sperm function, however, remain incompletely characterized. This work reviews the hypotheses proposed to explain sperm morphological evolution, with a focu...

Freeze-storage of epididymal sperm is an important technique for the preservation of gametes in animals, including those becoming extinct. We froze canine sperm recovered from the cauda epididymis and investigated the fertility. The qualities of sperm from the cauda epididymis before freezing were: mean sperm motility, 89.4 +/- 1.6 (SE) %; sperm viability, 89.1 +/- 1.1%; and these were signific...

In polyandrous species, sperm morphometry and sperm velocity are under strong sexual selection. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the role of sperm competition in sperm trait variation, this aspect is still poorly understood. It has been suggested that an increase in sperm competition pressure could reduce sperm size variation or produce a diversity of sperm to maximize ...

the objective of this study was to evaluate the importance of environmental and genetic factors affecting semen quality; sperm volume (sv), sperm concentration (spco), total sperm (ts), fresh sperm motility (fsm), total fresh motile sperm (tfms), post thaw sperm motility (ptsm), total post thaw motile sperm (tptms), number of produced payout (npp), number of fresh motile sperm in each milt ejac...