Last male sperm precedence in a damselfly demonstrated by RAPD profiling |
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Authors: | R. E. HOOPER M. T. SIVA-JOTHY |
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Affiliation: | Department Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK |
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Abstract: | We used the random amplified polymorphic DNA technique to determine last male sperm precedence ( P 2) in the damselfly Calopteryx splendens xanthostoma (Charpentier). We amplified DNA from mothers, putative fathers and from the embryos of individual offspring, and subsequently calculated band-matching coefficients between known first-order relatives (offspring within a clutch) and non-relatives (mothers and fathers) to estimate last-male paternity. The data indicate that, as in other Calopterygidae, P 2 is high (0.98) in the bout of oviposition immediately following copulation, despite the fact that the males of this species do not completely remove the sperm of previous males (Siva-Jothy & Hooper 1995). |
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Keywords: | Calopteryx splendens xanthostoma damselflies random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) sperm competition sperm precedence |
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