Effects of gamete behavior and density on fertilization success in marine green algae: insights from three-dimensional numerical simulations

Abstract

We developed a numerical simulation of mating experiment to study effects of phototactic gamete behavior and density on fertilization success, using the C++ programming language, and pseudo-parallelization methods with input parameters based on experimental data. In our experiments, we found that gametes with positive phototaxis are favored, particularly in shallow water, because they can search for potential mates on the two-dimensional (2-D) water surface rather than randomly in three dimensions. We also found evidence that sperm (male gametes) limitation might not be the dominant selective force in the evolution of isogamous or slightly anisogamous marine green algae because almost all of female gametes can be fertilized on the 2-D water surface meaning they might not be under sperm limited conditions. Gamete density also appears to affect mating success seriously. These findings were produced by some technical progress made recently to rapidly and correctly count the numbers of zygotes formed calculating the locations of huge numbers of male and female gametes in the test tank. Both gamete behavior and density might be determined by environmental conditions of habitat, particularly the depth of water.