Matrotrophy

Matrotrophy is a form of maternal care during embryo development.

Some flowering plants supplied the developing embryos for the first stages. The ovule has no stocks and the nutrients are provided by the "mother".

In plants, matrotrophy is considered a critical evolutionary development preceding the origin of embryophytes and therefore essential to the evolution of land plants. Matrotrophy is facilitated by cytological and ultrastructural modifications on one or both sides of the generational junction, a region called the placenta. Specialization of the placental cells pertains further to their cytological and ultrastructural characteristics: the cytoplasm is often dense and rich in lipids, the vacuole is typically reduced but large in Sphagnum, the endoplasmic reticulum extensive, numerous and large, chloroplasts numerous, often less differentiated, rich in lipid-filled globuli and sometimes filled with starch.

It is associated with live birth (viviparity), in which the embryo of an animal is supplied with additional nutrition from the mother (e.g. through an organ such as placenta or other forms of nutrients providing, e.g. ovatrophy). This can be contrasted with strict lecithotrophy as in oviparity, in which the only source of nutrition for the embryo is the yolk originally contained within the egg.

While commonly associated with vertebrates and especially mammals, matrotrophy occurs in more than 150 phyla within cordata and more than 140 phyla amongst invertebrates.

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