A Mating Strategy Involving Giant Sperm Has Stood the Test of Time

A reproductive strategy is essentially a cost-benefit analysis, as each organism has to determine how much energy to expend in its mating efforts. Most males, including humans, arrived at a strategy of producing vast amounts of tiny sperm, in hopes that among many matings, a few lucky sperm will manage to fertilize eggs. But some unusual organisms take a different approach and produce small amounts of "giant sperm," and a new study reveals that some organisms had adopted the strategy as early as 100 million years ago. The giant sperm strategy is found in a handful of modern organisms, including the fruit fly, which is