Skip to main content
  • Other Publications
    • Philosophical Transactions B
    • Proceedings B
    • Biology Letters
    • Open Biology
    • Philosophical Transactions A
    • Proceedings A
    • Royal Society Open Science
    • Interface
    • Interface Focus
    • Notes and Records
    • Biographical Memoirs

Advanced

  • Home
  • Content
    • Latest issue
    • All content
    • Subject collections
    • Special features
    • Videos
  • Information for
    • Authors
    • Reviewers
    • Readers
    • Institutions
  • About us
    • About the journal
    • Editorial board
    • Author benefits
    • Policies
    • Citation metrics
    • Publication times
    • Open access
  • Sign up
    • Subscribe
    • eTOC alerts
    • Keyword alerts
    • RSS feeds
    • Newsletters
    • Request a free trial
  • Submit
You have accessRestricted access

Salinity-induced phenotypic plasticity in threespine stickleback sperm activation

Annette Taugbøl, Anna B. Mazzarella, Emily R. A. Cramer, Terje Laskemoen
Published 11 October 2017.DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0516
Annette Taugbøl
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Bioscience, University of Oslo, 0316 Oslo, NorwayNorwegian Institute for Nature Research, 2624 Lillehammer, Norway
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Annette Taugbøl
  • For correspondence: annettetaugbol@gmail.com
Anna B. Mazzarella
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Bioscience, University of Oslo, 0316 Oslo, Norway
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Emily R. A. Cramer
Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, PO Box 1172, Blindern, 0381 Oslo, Norway
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Terje Laskemoen
Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, PO Box 1172, Blindern, 0381 Oslo, Norway
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

Abstract

Phenotypic expression may be and often is influenced by an organism's developmental environment, referred to as phenotypic plasticity. The sperm cells of teleosts have been found to be inactive in the seminal plasma and are activated by osmotic shock for most fish species, through release in either hypertonic (for marine fish) or hypotonic (for freshwater fish) water. If this is the case, the regulatory system of sperm mobility should be reversed in salt- and freshwater fish. We tested this hypothesis by first activating sperm of salt- and freshwater populations of threespine stickleback in salt- and freshwater. The sperm from saltwater stickleback could be activated in either salinity, which matches the freshwater colonization history of the species, whereas the sperm from the freshwater population acted as predicted by the osmotic shock theory and was activated in freshwater only. As the freshwater population used here was calculated to be thousands of years old, we went on to test whether the trait(s) were plastic and sperm from freshwater males still could be activated in saltwater after individuals were exposed to saltwater. After raising freshwater stickleback in saltwater, we found the mature males to have active sperm in both saltwater and freshwater. Further, we also found the sperm of wild-caught freshwater stickleback to be active in saltwater after exposing those mature males to saltwater for only 2 days. This illustrates that the ability for stickleback sperm to be activated in a range of water qualities is an environmentally induced plastic trait.

Footnotes

  • Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3889063.

  • Received August 15, 2017.
  • Accepted September 18, 2017.
  • © 2017 The Author(s)
http://royalsocietypublishing.org/licence

Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

View Full Text

Sign in for Fellows of the Royal Society

Fellows: please access the online journals via the Fellows’ Room

Not a subscriber? Request a free trial

Log in using your username and password

Enter your Biology Letters username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
Forgot your user name or password?

Log in through your institution

You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.

Pay Per Article - You may access this article or this issue (from the computer you are currently using) for 30 days.

Regain Access - You can regain access to a recent Pay per Article or Pay per Issue purchase if your access period has not yet expired.

PreviousNext
Back to top
PreviousNext
October 2017
Volume 13
, issue 10
Biology Letters: 13 (10)
  • Table of Contents
  • About the Cover
  • Index by author
  • Ed Board (PDF)

Keywords

adaptive evolution
plasticity
salinity
sperm activation
Gasterosteus aculeatus
Share
Salinity-induced phenotypic plasticity in threespine stickleback sperm activation
Annette Taugbøl, Anna B. Mazzarella, Emily R. A. Cramer, Terje Laskemoen
Biol. Lett. 2017 13 20170516; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0516. Published 11 October 2017
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Connotea logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Biology Letters.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Salinity-induced phenotypic plasticity in threespine stickleback sperm activation
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Biology Letters
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Biology Letters web site.
Print
Manage alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation tools
Research article:

Salinity-induced phenotypic plasticity in threespine stickleback sperm activation

Annette Taugbøl, Anna B. Mazzarella, Emily R. A. Cramer, Terje Laskemoen
Biol. Lett. 2017 13 20170516; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0516. Published 11 October 2017

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Article reuse

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Material and methods
    • 3. Results
    • 4. Discussion
    • Ethics
    • Data accessibility
    • Authors' contributions
    • Competing interests
    • Funding
    • Acknowledgements
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

See related subject areas:

  • evolution
  • ecology

Related articles

Cited by

Large datasets are available through Biology Letters' partnership with Dryad

Open biology

  • BIOLOGY LETTERS
    • About this journal
    • Contact information
    • Purchasing information
    • Submit
    • Author benefits
    • Open access membership
    • Recommend to your library
    • FAQ
    • Help

Royal society publishing

  • ROYAL SOCIETY PUBLISHING
    • Our journals
    • Open access
    • Publishing policies
    • Conferences
    • Podcasts
    • News
    • Blog
    • Manage your account
    • Terms & conditions
    • Cookies

The royal society

  • THE ROYAL SOCIETY
    • About us
    • Contact us
    • Fellows
    • Events
    • Grants, schemes & awards
    • Topics & policy
    • Collections
    • Venue hire
1744-957X

Copyright © 2018 The Royal Society