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- Yossi Loya
- Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University69978 Tel Aviv, Israel
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- Kazuhiko Sakai
- Sesoko Station, Tropical Biosphere Research Center, University of the RyukyusOkinawa 905-0227, Japan
説明
<jats:p>Sex change occurs when an individual changes from one functional sex to another. The direction of sex change occurs mainly from male to female (protandry) or vice versa (protogyny), but sometimes may be bidirectional (repetitive). Here, for the first time in stony corals, we report on a protandrous sex change exhibited by two mushroom corals,<jats:italic>Fungia repanda</jats:italic>and<jats:italic>Ctenactis echinata</jats:italic>, with the latter also exhibiting bidirectional sex change. Compared with<jats:italic>C. echinata</jats:italic>,<jats:italic>F. repanda</jats:italic>exhibited relatively earlier sex change, significantly slower growth and higher mortality rates, in accordance with sex-allocation theory. Sex ratio in both the species was biased towards the first sex. The bidirectional sex change displayed by<jats:italic>C. echinata</jats:italic>greatly resembles that of dioecious plants that display labile sexuality in response to energetic and/or environmental constraints. We posit that, similar to these plants, in the studied corals, sex change increases their overall fitness, reinforcing the important role of reproductive plasticity in scleractinian corals in determining their evolutionary success.</jats:p>
収録刊行物
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- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275 (1649), 2335-2343, 2008-07-08
The Royal Society