Title: INDIVIDUAL ANNUAL FECUNDITY AND REPRODUCTIVE ENERGY INVESTMENT IN MUSHROOM SCLERACTINIAN CORALS

Abstract: Reproductive investment and growth are often used as indicators of health or stress at the organism level. Knowledge of how such energy investment varies intrinsically among species or morphological types is crucial for the interpretation of physiological responses to environmental factors. Patterns of energy allocation may change in accordance to the degree of sexual maturity of the individual and are often size-dependent processes. Insight into the allocation of energy to reproduction and growth is central to understanding both the life-history strategies of species and the physiological tradeoffs of individual organisms since the reproductive energy allocation strategy affects virtually all other life-history traits. Due to their wide range of module sizes, colony growth forms, and life-history characteristics, scleractinian corals provide an important opportunity to assess how the relative allocation to sexual reproduction relates to morphology, size, and life-history strategies. We examined the reproductive activity and energy investment of two mushroom scleractinian corals, bearing different reproductive strategies; Fungia fungites and Herpolitha limax and surveyed the size frequency distribution of the fungiid populations in their natural habitat in the coral reefs of Okinawa, Japan. Fecundity was found to be highest at middle size (i.e. middle ages) and decline at older ages; sex ratios were more female-biased at middle ages than in early and late life ages and the middle size group showed high settlement rates in comparison to other size groups.

Authors: Eyal-Shaham L, Eyal G, Harii S, Sinniger F, Loya Y

Presentation: Oral

Session: 29

Date: 06/20/16

Time: 18:00

Location: 317 A/B

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