Prolonged copulation and the internal dynamics of sperm transfer in the water strider <i>Aquarius remigis</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Copulations lasting much longer than required to effect insemination are common throughout the Insecta, but their adaptive significance remains obscure. We address the hypothesis that prolonged copulations benefit male Aquarius remigis (Hemiptera, Gerridae) by influencing sperm use and storage following insemination. We describe the gynatrial complex of females and document sperm location immediately following 32 naturally terminated and 25 artificially terminated copulations. We also examine sperm storage in 22 females isolated from males for 210 days. Our results demonstrate that insemination occurs at the end of copulation, and therefore that prolonged copulation is not a post-insemination mate-guarding tactic, as was previously assumed. Sperm are transferred in a coherent, coiled mass and move rapidly to the spermathecal tube, the primary storage organ. However, a few sperm move directly to the fecundation canal and hence should be capable of immediate fertilization. Prolonged copulation is associated with increased filling of the spermathecal tube, which may indicate some form of copulatory courtship or sperm loading by males during the prolonged pre-insemination phase. We discuss this new interpretation of prolonged copulation in A. remigis in the context of the overall costs and benefits of prolonged copulation for both sexes under the natural conditions of polygynandry.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".