The effects of experimentally induced adelphophagy in gastropod embryos.

ABSTRACT: Adelphophagy, development where embryos grow large by consuming morphologically distinct nutritive embryos or their own normal siblings is widespread but uncommon among animal phyla. Among invertebrates it is particularly common in some families of marine gastropods and segmented worms, but rare or unknown in other closely related families. In calyptraeid gastropods phylogenetic analysis indicates that adelphophagy has arisen at least 9 times from species with planktotrophic larval development. This pattern of frequent parallel evolution of adelphophagy suggests that the embryos of planktotrophic species might be predisposed to evolve adelphophagy. Here we used embryos of three species of planktotrophic calyptraeids, one from each of three major genera in the family (Bostrycapulus, Crucibu

SUBMITTER: Thomsen O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4114838 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature