Birds show considerable variation in sperm morphology. Closely related species and subspecies can show diagnostic differences in sperm size. There is also variation in sperm size among males within a population, and recent ...

Sperm morphology is highly diversified across the animal kingdom and recent comparative evidence from passerine birds suggests that postcopulatory sexual selection is a significant driver of sperm evolution. In the present ...

Natural history museum collections represent a vast source of ancient and historical DNA samples from extinct taxa that can be utilized by high-throughput sequencing tools to reveal novel genetic and phylogenetic information ...

Telomere length is related to aging in many eukaryotes and the rate of telomere attrition has been suggested to reflect individual genetic quality. Telomere length could thus have implications for mate choice. We investigated ...

Sperm morphology is highly diversified among species and at higher taxonomic levels. In birds, there is also increasing evidence of geographical differentiation in sperm traits within species, especially in those with ...

A recent comparative analysis of passerine birds found that the frequency of extra-pair paternity was positively associated with neutral genetic diversity. It has been hypothesised that migratory species have more extra-pair ...

Taxonomy is being increasingly informed by genomics. Traditionally, taxonomy has relied extensively on phenotypic traits for the identification and delimitation of species, though with a growing influence from molecular ...

Mitochondrial DNA usually shows low sequence variation within and high sequence divergence among species, which makes it a useful marker for phylogenetic inference and DNA barcoding. A previous study on the common redstart ...

There is growing evidence that post-copulatory sexual selection, mediated by sperm competition, influences the evolution of sperm phenotypes. Evidence for pre-copulatory sexual selection effects on sperm traits, on the ...

Sperm exhibit extraordinary levels of morphological diversification across the animal kingdom. In songbirds, sperm have a helically shaped head incorporating a distinct acrosomal membrane or “helical keel,” the form and ...