London, June 11 (IANS): It takes two to tango. But here, a bundle of sperm beat out other sperm in race to fertilisation!
The sperm of a desert ant known as C savignyi bundle up to swim 50 percent faster than any single sperm could.
The speed of the bundled sperm helps them reach the storage organ in female ants faster.
“Females of this species mate with many males in quick succession, and only the quickest, strongest sperm end up stored in the female sperm storage organ, the spermatheca,†informed Morgan Pearcy, a evolutionary biologist at Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium.Â
Once in, these sperm can live for 20 to 30 years -- far longer than males that produced them who survive only a few weeks.
“In the end, the higher the proportion of your own sperm stored in the spermatheca, the more offspring you will have," Pearcy explained.
The queens of this species mate with an average of nine - and up to 14 - males one after another.
They then store the males' sperm in spermatheca, keeping it there for life.Â
Queens can live up to a decade in the wild.
In contrast, males of the species live only a few weeks.Â
These sperm may also be more energy-efficient swimmers which could help save resources for their long wait inside the spermatheca, Pearcy concluded.