Ejaculate deterioration with male age, and its amelioration in Drosophila

Abstract

Declining ejaculate performance with male age is taxonomically widespread and has broad ramifications for fertility and fitness. However, we have a poor understanding of age-related changes to specific ejaculate components, how they cause reduced performance, and whether the decline is ameliorable. Here, we show that, in Drosophila, sperm production chronologically declines with age, invariant to mating activity, while repeated mating causes infertility via reduced sperm stores and viability. However, changes to sperm do not fully explain ejaculate deterioration: impacts on seminal fluid contribute to aspects of reduced ejaculate performance, associated with shifts in proteome abundance and quality. We show that ablation of insulin-like peptide-producing cells in males ameliorates aspects of ejaculate performance loss, suggesting that anti-ageing interventions can be coopted to benefit male reproductive health.\n\nOne Sentence SummaryEjaculate performance declines with male age via mating-dependent sperm and seminal protein deterioration, but it can be ameliorated.