Reproduction
Mussels have separate sexes. Once the sperm and eggs are fully developed they are released into the water column for fertilization. Although there are about 10,000 sperm per an egg, large proportions of eggs deposited by blue mussel are never fertilized. As few as 1% of larvae that do mature ever reach adulthood, the majority are eaten by predators before completing metamorphosis.
The reproductive strategy seen in blue mussels is characteristic of planktotrophs, by minimizing nutrients in egg production to the bare minimum they are able to maximize the number of gametes produced. If the adult mussels are stressed during the beginning of gametogenesis, the process is terminated. When stressed while fresh gametes are present, adult mussels reabsorb gametes. Larvae viability is also effected by the condition of parents: high water temperatures, pollutants and scarcity of food, during gamete production. The reduction in viability is probable to the lack of lipid reserves distributed to the eggs.
Read more about this topic: Blue Mussel
Famous quotes containing the word reproduction:
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)