Morphological description of gametes in cave and surface populations of Astyanax mexicanus (De Filippi, 1853)

The Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus presents two contrasting morphs, a widely distributed surface morph and a cave-adapted morph. These cave-adapted morphs have evolved independently from two different lineages (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ lineages); therefore, this model system gives a unique opportunity to explore parallel adaptive evolution in biological traits. The present study corresponds to the first morphological description of the Astyanax mexicanus maturation process of the spermatozoa and oocytes, using thermal and hormonal stimuli to promote spermatogenesis and oogenesis, considering surface and cave morphs from both lineages. We corroborate the relevance of thermal and hormonal stimuli to promote gamete maturation. The hormone Ovaprim (GnRHa + Domperidone) is an effective promoter of ovarian development, maturation end in oocytes and spawning in Astyanax mexicanus . The sperm morphology of Astyanax mexicanus includes the sperm head, the midpiece, and tail or flagellum. We found differences in the spermatozoan total length between environments ( F = 9.929, P = 0.05) and linages ( F = 49.86, P = 0.005). The oocytes showed a spherical conformation with a mean diameter of 822.4 ± 194.1 μm for the surface populations, and 604.6 ± 38.3 µm for the cave populations. The oocyte chorion presents ridges and grooves that are arranged radially towards the micropyle. A plug in the micropyle zone was observed after fertilization, confirmed by the outer membrane of the chorion, which provides some weak adhesiveness to the substrate. We observed differences in chorion thickness between the contrasting environmental conditions. This is the first morphological characterization of the Sótanos Vázquez, Escondido and Tigre, which previous to this study were only known from speleological expeditions, with no previous biological information available.