Ovoviviparity, ovovivipary, ovivipary, or aplacental viviparity is a term used as a "bridging" form of reproduction between egg-laying
oviparous and live-bearing
viviparous reproduction. Ovoviviparous
animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
s possess
embryos that develop inside
egg
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...
s that remain in the mother's body until they are ready to hatch.
The young of some ovoviviparous
amphibians, such as ''
Limnonectes larvaepartus'', are born as
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
...
e, and undergo further
metamorphosis outside the body of the mother. Members of genera ''
Nectophrynoides
''Nectophrynoides'' is a genus of true toads, family Bufonidae. They are endemic to Eastern Arc forests and wetlands in Tanzania,Channing and Howell. (2006). ''Amphibians of East Africa.'' Pp. 104–117. and all except '' N. tornieri'' are thr ...
'' and ''
Eleutherodactylus
''Eleutherodactylus'' is a genus of frogs in the family Eleutherodactylidae.Hedges, S. B., W. E. Duellman, and M. P. Heinicke . 2008. New World direct-developing frogs (Anura: Terrarana): molecular phylogeny, classification, biogeography, and c ...
'' bear froglets, not only the hatching, but all the most conspicuous
metamorphosis, being completed inside the body of the mother before birth.
Among insects that depend on
opportunistic
Opportunism is the practice of taking advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term ...
exploitation of transient food sources, such as many
Sarcophagidae
Sarcophagidae () are a family of flies commonly known as flesh flies. They differ from most flies in that they are ovoviviparous, opportunistically depositing hatched or hatching maggots instead of eggs on carrion, dung, decaying material, or o ...
and other
carrion flies, and species such as many
Calliphoridae
The Calliphoridae (commonly known as blow flies, blow-flies, carrion flies, bluebottles, greenbottles, or cluster flies) are a family of insects in the order Diptera, with almost 1,900 known species. The maggot larvae, often used as fishing ba ...
, that rely on fresh dung, and
parasitoids such as
tachinid
The Tachinidae are a large and variable family of true flies within the insect order Diptera, with more than 8,200 known species and many more to be discovered. Over 1,300 species have been described in North America alone. Insects in this family ...
flies that depend on entering the host as soon as possible, the embryos commonly develop to the first larval
instar
An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ...
inside the mother's reproductive tract, and they hatch just before being laid or almost immediately afterwards.
Ovoviviparity
Ovoviviparous animals are similar to
viviparous
Among animals, viviparity is development of the embryo inside the body of the parent. This is opposed to oviparity which is a reproductive mode in which females lay developing eggs that complete their development and hatch externally from the ...
species in which there is
internal fertilization
Internal fertilization is the union of an egg and sperm cell during sexual reproduction inside the female body. Internal fertilization, unlike its counterpart, external fertilization, brings more control to the female with reproduction. For inte ...
and the young are born alive, but differ in that there is no
placenta
The placenta is a temporary embryonic and later fetal organ that begins developing from the blastocyst shortly after implantation. It plays critical roles in facilitating nutrient, gas and waste exchange between the physically separate mate ...
l connection and the unborn young are nourished by
egg yolk; the mother's body does provide
gas exchange
Gas exchange is the physical process by which gases move passively by diffusion across a surface. For example, this surface might be the air/water interface of a water body, the surface of a gas bubble in a liquid, a gas-permeable membrane, or a ...
.
In some species, the internally developing embryos rely solely on
yolk
Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example ...
. This is known as "yolk-sac viviparity" and is regarded as a type of lecithotrophy (no maternal provisioning). Other species exhibit
matrotrophy
Matrotrophy is a form of maternal care during organism development, associated with live birth (viviparity), in which the embryo of an animal or flowering plant is supplied with additional nutrition from the mother (e.g. through a placenta). This ...
, in which the embryo exhausts its yolk supply early in
gestation and the mother provides additional nutrition. This additional provisioning may be in the form of unfertilized eggs (intrauterine
oophagy
Oophagy ( ) sometimes ovophagy, literally "egg eating", is the practice of
embryos feeding on eggs produced by the ovary while still inside the mother's uterus. The word oophagy is formed from the classical Greek (, "egg") and classical Greek (, ...
), uterine secretions (
histotrophy Histotrophy is a form of matrotrophy exhibited by some live-bearing sharks and rays, in which the developing embryo receives additional nutrition from its mother in the form of uterine secretions, known as histotroph (or "uterine milk"). It is on ...
) or it may be delivered through a
placenta
The placenta is a temporary embryonic and later fetal organ that begins developing from the blastocyst shortly after implantation. It plays critical roles in facilitating nutrient, gas and waste exchange between the physically separate mate ...
. The first two of these modes were categorized under histotroph
viviparity
Among animals, viviparity is development of the embryo inside the body of the parent. This is opposed to oviparity which is a reproductive mode in which females lay developing eggs that complete their development and hatch externally from the ...
, or aplacental viviparity.
Amphibians
The young of ovoviviparous
amphibians are sometimes born as
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
...
e, and undergo
metamorphosis outside the body of the mother.
Modes of reproduction
Animals make use of a variety of modes of reproduction to produce their young. Traditionally this variety was classified into three modes, oviparity (embryos in eggs), viviparity (young born live), and ovoviviparity (intermediate between the first ...
include based on relations between
zygote
A zygote (, ) is a eukaryotic cell formed by a fertilization event between two gametes. The zygote's genome is a combination of the DNA in each gamete, and contains all of the genetic information of a new individual organism.
In multicell ...
and parents:
* Ovuliparity: external fertilisation, as in arthropods, many bony fishes, and most
amphibia
Amphibians are four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arbor ...
ns
* Oviparity: internal fertilisation, where the female lays zygotes as eggs with important vitellus (typically birds)
* Ovo-viviparity can be thought of as a form of oviparity where the zygotes are retained in the female's body or in the male's body, but there are no trophic interactions between zygote and parents. This is found in ''
Anguis fragilis''. In
seahorse
A seahorse (also written ''sea-horse'' and ''sea horse'') is any of 46 species of small marine fish in the genus ''Hippocampus''. "Hippocampus" comes from the Ancient Greek (), itself from () meaning "horse" and () meaning "sea monster" or " ...
s, zygotes remain in the male's ventral "marsupium". In the frog ''
Rhinoderma darwinii'', the zygotes develop in the vocal sac. In the frog ''
Rheobatrachus'', zygotes develop in the stomach.
Ovolarviparity
Some insects, notably
tachinid flies
The Tachinidae are a large and variable family of true flies within the insect order Diptera, with more than 8,200 known species and many more to be discovered. Over 1,300 species have been described in North America alone. Insects in this family ...
, are ovolarviparous, which means that the embryos develop into the first larval stage (
instar
An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ...
) within the eggs while still in the female's
oviduct
The oviduct in mammals, is the passageway from an ovary. In human females this is more usually known as the Fallopian tube or uterine tube. The eggs travel along the oviduct. These eggs will either be fertilized by spermatozoa to become a zygote, o ...
. As a result, the larvae hatch more rapidly, sometimes immediately after egg deposition, and can begin feeding right away. A similar phenomenon is larviparity, in which larvae hatch ''before'' the female delivers them, although this may be mistakenly identified in species with very thin and transparent egg membranes.
Criticisms and disuse
A lack of a rigidly defined term resulted in widespread misuse of the term ovoviviparity in the biological literature.
Ovoviviparity has been used to describe delayed forms of egg-laying reproduction as well as live-bearing species that provide maternal nutrients but do not use a placenta.
This widespread misuse of the term has led to confusion over what earlier authors meant when using the name. Modern practice has seen the disuse of ovoviviparity in favour of the more specific definitions of lecithotrophic and matrotrophic oviparity and viviparity.
References
{{Portal bar, Sharks, Gastropods, Snakes, Frogs, Amphibians, Fish
Reproduction in animals
Live-bearing fish
Ovoviviparous fish
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