Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Physioecology of Tropical Marine Copepods. II. Sex Ratios

Physioecology of Tropical Marine Copepods. II. Sex Ratios PHYSIOECOLOGY OF TROPICAL MARINE COPEPODS. II. SEX RATIOS BY EUNA A. MOORE Biology Department, University of the West Indies, Barbados, West Indies and FINN SANDER Bellairs Research Institute of McGill University, St. James, Barbados, West Indies INTRODUCTION The observed phenomenon of all-female populations, or low percent males in populations, is of more than passing biological interest, especially in those cases where reproduction is accomplished sexually, interest being focused on the evolutionary significance and the adaptive value of the sex disparity. In the marine environment the incidence of this phenomenon increases with depth and a significantly large number of species have been described from females only (Brodsky, 1950), while the reverse is the case where only the males are known. The vanishing illumination in the bathypelagic and abyssal regions of the ocean at once eliminate the phototrophic portions of the food chain and in- crease the difficulty of catch for actively hunting organisms. Survival of the species would therefore be more critically dependent on feeding efficiency and biological conservation. It has been suggested (Mednikov, 1961) that the various morphological, behavioural and life history modifications of the males constitute a form of biological conservation aimed at ensuring the females a http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Crustaceana Brill

Physioecology of Tropical Marine Copepods. II. Sex Ratios

Crustaceana , Volume 44 (2): 113 – Jan 1, 1983

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/physioecology-of-tropical-marine-copepods-ii-sex-ratios-0rDLutu6Dr

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1983 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0011-216x
eISSN
1568-5403
DOI
10.1163/156854083X00749
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

PHYSIOECOLOGY OF TROPICAL MARINE COPEPODS. II. SEX RATIOS BY EUNA A. MOORE Biology Department, University of the West Indies, Barbados, West Indies and FINN SANDER Bellairs Research Institute of McGill University, St. James, Barbados, West Indies INTRODUCTION The observed phenomenon of all-female populations, or low percent males in populations, is of more than passing biological interest, especially in those cases where reproduction is accomplished sexually, interest being focused on the evolutionary significance and the adaptive value of the sex disparity. In the marine environment the incidence of this phenomenon increases with depth and a significantly large number of species have been described from females only (Brodsky, 1950), while the reverse is the case where only the males are known. The vanishing illumination in the bathypelagic and abyssal regions of the ocean at once eliminate the phototrophic portions of the food chain and in- crease the difficulty of catch for actively hunting organisms. Survival of the species would therefore be more critically dependent on feeding efficiency and biological conservation. It has been suggested (Mednikov, 1961) that the various morphological, behavioural and life history modifications of the males constitute a form of biological conservation aimed at ensuring the females a

Journal

CrustaceanaBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1983

There are no references for this article.