animals Review Status of Sperm Functionality Assessment in Wildlife Species: From Fish to Primates Gerhard van der Horst Comparative Spermatology Laboratory, Department of Medical Bioscience, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town 7535, South Africa;
[email protected]; Tel.: +27-822023560 Simple Summary: In general, wildlife species have been underrepresented, in terms of understand- ing their reproductive physiology. The artificial propagation of wildlife species, found in aquaculture (e.g., fish) and in protection of endangered species (e.g., black-footed ferret), is pertinent to this discussion. One important approach to addressing this would involve a basic understanding of the structure and function of the gametes of many wildlife species. The focus of this investigation was to provide a better understanding of the physiology of sperm of diverse wildlife species, with special attention given to the assessment of high-quality sperm. Modern approaches using sophisticated microscopy (image analysis) techniques, e.g., computer-aided sperm analysis and sperm flagellar analysis, provided advanced technology to evaluate sperm quality quantitatively. Some of these techniques involved largely automated assessments of many aspects of sperm motility, morphology, vitality, fragmentation and other indirect methods. These modern assessments are fundamental to classify sperm quality. Accordingly, cutting-edge technologies used to define high quality sperm of representative species from most vertebrate animal groups (from fish to primates) were discussed in the present work. These approaches are also important in developing and assessing the best methods to cryopreserve sperm for assisted reproductive technologies in wildlife species. Citation: van der Horst, G. Status of Sperm Functionality Assessment in Abstract: (1) Background: in order to propagate wildlife species (covering the whole spectrum from Wildlife Species: From Fish to species suitable for aquaculture to endangered species), it is important to have a good understanding Primates.