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Ecological implications of the reproductive biology of symbiotic nemerteans

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Abstract

A major problem for parasites is to ensure that offspring will reach a correct host. Responses to this problem include several reproductive adaptations. This review paper shows that Carcinonemertes has several such adaptations, including increased number of gonads and offspring, synchrony of hatching with host larval hatching, facultative parthenogenesis, and mating. Other nemerteans show different, but comparably adaptive, reproductive modifications for parasitism. In contrast, reproductive biology of the commensal Malacobdella resembles that of free-living nemerteans, being timed to coincide with plankton blooms that are food for settling young.

It has been thought that nemerteans found in association with other animals usually have only causal relationships with those animals, and that actual parasitism is rare among nemerteans. However, it is being found that parasitism is both well developed and more common among nemerteans than was previously thought. Nemerteas show in their reproductive biology that they are adapted to the selective factors that are important in their ways of life, and we should be able to predict the life styles of these worms by knowing their reproductive ecology.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, 95380, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA, USA

    Pamela Roe

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Roe, P. Ecological implications of the reproductive biology of symbiotic nemerteans. Hydrobiologia 156, 13–22 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00027973

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