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Updated: Jul 5, 2025

Assessing Differences in Sperm Competitive Ability in Drosophila
Published on: August 22, 2013
Digest: A sex chromosome driver without a sperm deficit
1Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Abstract:
Meiotic drivers that act during spermatogenesis derive a transmission advantage by disabling sperm that do not carry the driver, often leading to substantially reduced overall sperm number and function. A new study by Bates et al. shows no sperm deficit for a driver in a stalk-eyed fly, in contrast to a related species. This observed sperm compensation is possibly due to secondary testes-expanding mutations linked to the driving genomic locus.
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