Early release of eggs and embryos in a brooding ancient asexual ostracod: brood selection or a gambling strategy to increase fecundity?

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• 作者：Ricardo L. Pinto ; Carlos E. F. Rocha and Koen Martens
• 关键词：Brooding ; Ancient asexual ; Ostracoda ; Darwinulidae ; Reproduction ; Evolution ; Bet ; hedging
• 刊名：Hydrobiologia
• 出版年：2007
• 出版时间：July, 2007
• 年：2007
• 卷：585
• 期：1
• 页码：249-253
• 全文大小：128 KB
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Life Sciences
  Hydrobiology
  Ecology
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-5117

文摘

Asexual lineages lack the means to purge their genomes of (deleterious) mutations through recombination. Evolutionary theory thus predicts that such lineages will be prone to early extinction. In brooding animals, brood selection might provide a mechanism to counter the accumulation of mutations. Of the three putative ancient asexual animal groups, only the darwinulid ostracods are brooders. Here, we test the incidence of egg and juvenile abortion in a darwinulid species, Penthesilenula brasiliensis, under two temperature treatments. Part of the offspring is released without brooding (close to 30% in one treatment). The majority of these aborted eggs hatches and develops. As it is unlikely that females are such bad judges of offspring quality, either the surviving animals will present deficiencies later on in development (brood selection) or early egg release can be a (bet-hedging) strategy to increase fecundity in favourable conditions.