Remarkable Shifts in Offspring Provisioning during Gestation in a Live-Bearing Cnidarian.

ABSTRACT: Animals display diverse means of producing and provisioning offspring, from eggs to embryos and juveniles. While external development predominates, many forms of embryonic incubation have evolved, including placentation in mammals and a number of understudied variants in basal metazoans that could help understand evolutionary diversification. Here we studied the brooding sea anemone Aulactinia stella, using behavioural, morphological and biochemical indicators of offspring phenotype to characterize gestation and elucidate parental and sibling relationships. The pronounced variance in juvenile weight within broods was not strongly related to any of the typical external predictors (adult weight, clutch size, sampling date, environmental conditions). Lipid concentration was significantly high

SUBMITTER: Mercier A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4841577 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature