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Lecithotrophy


Oviparous animals are animals that lay eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive method of most fish, amphibians, reptiles, all birds, and the monotremes.

In traditional usage, most insects, molluscs, and arachnids are also described as oviparous; Thierry Lodé (2012), however, describes the mode of reproduction in these organization.

The traditional modes of reproduction include oviparity, taken to be the ancestral condition, traditionally where either unfertilised oocytes or fertilised eggs are spawned, and viviparity traditionally including any mechanism where young are born live, or where the development of the young is supported by either parent in or on any part of their body.

However, the biologist Thierry Lodé recently divided the traditional category of oviparous reproduction into two modes that he named ovuliparity and (true) oviparity respectively. He distinguished the two on the basis of the relationship between the zygote (fertilised egg) and the parents :

In all but special cases of both ovuliparity and oviparity the overwhelming source of nourishment for the embryo is the yolk material deposited in the egg by the reproductive system of the mother; offspring that depend on yolk in this manner are said to be lecithotrophic, which literally means "feeding on yolk".

Distinguishing between the definitions of oviparity and ovuliparity necessarily reduces the number of species whose modes of reproduction are classified as oviparous, as they no longer include the ovuliparous species such as most fish, most frogs and many invertebrates. Such classifications are largely for convenience and as such can be important in practice. — but speaking loosely in contexts in which the distinction is not relevant, it is common to lump both categories together as "oviparous".


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