VIELLE , Anne

Thermal developmental plasticity represents a key organismal adaptation to maintain reproductive capacity in contrasting and fluctuating temperature niches. Although extensively studied, research on thermal plasticity has mainly focused on phenotypic outcomes, such as adult life history, rather than directly measuring plasticity of underlying...

Maintaining reproduction in highly variable, often stressful, environments is an essential challenge for all organisms. Even transient exposure to mild environmental stress may directly damage germ cells or simply tax the physiology of an individual, making it difficult to produce quality gametes. In Caenorhabditis elegans , a large fraction of...

The diversity in sperm shape and size represents a powerful paradigm to understand how selection drives the evolutionary diversification of cell morphology. Experimental work on the sperm biology of the male-hermaphrodite nematode C. elegans has elucidated diverse factors important for sperm fertilization success, including the competitive...

Sperm cells provide essential, if usually diminutive, ingredients to successful sexual reproduction. Despite this conserved function, sperm competition and coevolution with female traits can drive spectacular morphological change in these cells. Here, we characterize four repeated instances of convergent evolution of sperm gigantism in...