Behavior and Reproduction
Sea urchins are often found living in clumps from five to ten. They have the ability to regenerate lost spines. Lifespan often exceeds 30 years, and scientists have found some specimens to be over 200 years old.
Spawning peaks between June and September. Eggs are fertilized externally while they float in the ocean, and planktonic larvae (echinopluteus) remain in the water column for about a month before settling on the bottom of the sea floor, where they undergo metamorphosis into juvenile urchins. These juveniles use chemical cues to locate adults. Although juveniles are found almost exclusively under aggregated adults, the adults and juveniles are not directly related. Red Sea Urchins can effectively reproduce at an advanced age.
Read more about this topic: Red Sea Urchin
Famous quotes containing the words behavior and, behavior and/or reproduction:
“Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“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)