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You are here: Home / Digital library / CRUSTACEA / MALACOSTRACA / Decapoda / Biblio / Insights on the female reproductive system in Hippolyte inermis (Decapoda, Caridea): is this species really hermaphroditic?

V. Cobos, V. Diaz, G. Raso, J. Enrique, and M. E Manjon-Cabeza (2005)

Insights on the female reproductive system in Hippolyte inermis (Decapoda, Caridea): is this species really hermaphroditic?

Invertebrate Biology, 124(4):310-320.

The majority of the published data about the reproductive biology of the decapod shrimp, Hippolyte inermis support the idea that this species is a protandric hermaphrodite, as is reported to be the case for certain other caridean species. However, our studies, based on the relative growth of the male reproductive appendage and histological examinations of the ovary, testes, oviducts, and deferentia vasa, indicate that there is no evidence supporting the occurrence of protandry. The first report of anomalies in the process of sexual inversion is credited to Reverberi (1950); however, we have obtained no evidence to support this phenomenon in H. inermis. We have not found either ovotestes or testes transforming into ovotestes. Therefore, we propose that H. inermis is a gonochoric species.

coenobita-clypeatus decapoda, crustacea, lysmata-wurdemanni caridea, oocytes, oogenesis, pandalus-borealis, protandrous hermaphroditism, protandry, sexual system, sexual inversion, shrimp, terrestrial hermit-crab, Zostera
WOS:000233807500004
  • DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7410.2005.00029.x
  • ISSN: 1077-8306