for National Geographic News
Biologists already know that plants sporting flowers of both sexes focus on their masculine attributes during times of stress. Now, a new study provides the first experimental evidence that some hermaphrodite animals also benefit from promoting maleness when faced with troublesome conditions.
Researchers show that one type of marine invertebrate-—commonly found to foul ships, kelp, and other surfaces—produces many more male reproductive parts than female, when it's wounded or is faced with other damage.
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Hermaphrodites are species that have both male and female sexual organs.
Reproductive Bailout
It's a kind of "reproductive bailout strategy," said ecologist co-author Roger Hughes at the University of Wales, Bangor. Producing fruit or carrying the relatively heavier burden of eggs and offspring is more expensive than producing sperm, he said. If an organism's time is limited, it pays to quickly invest in cheap-to-produce sperm or pollen.
Hughes and colleagues reveal the find in the August 19 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Since the late 19th century, researchers have noticed the same strategy in flowering plants. Many of these have flowers that include both male and female parts, or have flowers of both sexes on the same plant. These plants are typically found to increase the ratio of pollen to fruit and seed production when faced with drought, disease, herbivore attack, and other stressful conditions.
"People hadn't predicted this effect would be seen in animals before," commented Bruno Baur, evolutionary biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland. The next step will be to see if other animals put more resources into the male sex during times of stress, he said.
Researchers have rarely considered the strategy relevant to animals, agreed Hughes. However colonial invertebrates, which are anchored to the same spot for life, share many attributes with plants, he said.
The tiny marine bryozoan organism Celleporella Hyalina, for example, consists of many modular units which are either male, female (like flowers), or feeding units. These tiny animals grow in an immobile, flat, disc-shaped colony, and release sperm into the water current, much like trees and other plants release pollen into the wind.
Male Multiplication
To test the idea that these animals might use the same strategy as plants, Hughes and his coworkers divided up the modules of one individual and allowed them to grow into a number of experimental colonies, grown on small plastic discs. This was repeated for several different genetic individuals.
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