Spawners

Copepods

Copepods are tiny crustaceans which usually reproduce either by broadcast spawning or by sac spawning. Broadcasting copepods scatter their eggs into the water, but sac spawners lay their eggs into an ovigerous sac. Sac spawners spawn few but relatively large eggs that develop slowly. By contrast, broadcast spawners spawn numerous small eggs that develop rapidly. However, the shorter hatch times that result from broadcasting are not short enough to compensate for the higher mortality compared to sac spawners. To produce a given number of hatched eggs, broadcasters must spawn more eggs than sac spawners.