Abstract
The present work constitutes the first ultrastructural analysis of the spermatozoon in the Pleurogenidae, with the study of three species belonging to three of the 16 genera included in this family, namely Pleurogenes claviger, Pleurogenoides medians and Prosotocus confusus. The mature spermatozoa of these pleurogenids present two axonemes of the 9+“1” trepaxonematan pattern, a nucleus, two mitochondria, two bundles of parallel cortical microtubules, external ornamentation, spine-like bodies and granules of glycogen. The organization of these characters in the sperm cell is similar in the three species. Thus, the anterior spermatozoon extremity is filiform and a continuous and submembranous layer of parallel cortical microtubules surrounds the axonemes at their anterior end. The posterior spermatozoon extremity exhibits the second axoneme and corresponds to the Cryptogonimidean type of Quilichini et al. (2010). Slight differences were noted between the spermatozoon of P. confusus and those of the two remaining species in the location of mitochondria.
Highlights
Ultrastructural characteristics of spermatozoa were proved to be valuable tools for the analysis of phylogenetic relationships within the Platyhelminthes, for the Eucestoda and for the Monogenea [3, 22, 31,32,33,34,35,36, 46, 83]
In P. claviger and P. medians the first mitochondrion appears in the anterior areas of Region I (Figures 1d and 3e–g) while in P. confusus it is observed in the ornamented area (Figure 5g, h)
Other additional aspects include the presence of spine-like bodies in the ornamented area of the sperm cell and the continuous submembranous layer of cortical microtubules in the anterior extremity of the spermatozoon
Summary
Ultrastructural characteristics of spermatozoa were proved to be valuable tools for the analysis of phylogenetic relationships within the Platyhelminthes, for the Eucestoda and for the Monogenea [3, 22, 31,32,33,34,35,36, 46, 83]. We present the first spermatological data of this family, with the study of the ultrastructural organization of the mature spermatozoon of Pleurogenes claviger, Pleurogenoides medians and Prosotocus confusus
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