"Modeling Diffusive Search by Non-Adaptive Sperm: Empirical and Computational Insights".

Unlabelled: During fertilization, mammalian sperm undergo a winnowing selection process that reduces the candidate pool of potential fertilizers from ∼10 -10 cells to 10 -10 cells (depending on the species). Classical sperm competition theory addresses the positive or 'stabilizing' selection acting on sperm phenotypes within populations of organisms but does not strictly address the developmental consequences of sperm traits among individual organisms that are under purifying selection during fertilization. It is the latter that is of utmost concern for improving assisted reproductive technologies (ART) because 'low fitness' sperm may be inadvertently used for fertilization during interventions that rely heavily on artificial sperm selection, such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).