Seahorse giving birth!
The typical wild Seahorse mating season begins in April and lasts until the seahorses move into deep water, at the start of winter. The heart of their breeding season occurs during the warm summer months. However, Seahorses within the southern region tend to breed all year round, especially when they're bred within captivity.
To start off the breeding process, seahorses would pair off with the opposite sex, though a study in 2004 suggests there have been occasional occurrences of pairs of the same sex. Once paired, the seahorses will begin the courtship dance, which lasts several days.
During the courtship dance, the pair will begin to synchronize with each other, while twirling around one another with interlocked tails or gripping the same seaweed. The male seahorse will also begin expanding his brood pouch signaling that he is ready for the eggs to be deposited.
Nearing the end of the courtship dance, the female seahorse will have a 6-second window where the male seahorse's brood pouch is open. She will then extend a tube from her belly, attach herself to the male seahorse, and begin depositing the eggs. During this 6 second window, seawater will also enter the pouch where both the spermatozoa and eggs, meet. This environment will facilitate the sperm's activation and motility, in which they will eventually fertilize the eggs.
Once the 6-second window ends and the eggs become fertilized, the male seahorse will begin the gestation process. The eggs inside the male seahorse will then embed themselves to the pouch wall and become surrounded by spongy tissue. The gestation process can last upwards of 45 days, where the male seahorse's brood pouch will act as an incubation pod, supplying the eggs with both oxygen and prolactin, the same hormone responsible for milk production in pregnant mammals.
Though the embryos within the pouch receive nourishment from the egg yolk, the male seahorses contribute additional nutrients such as energy-rich lipids and calcium, which are secreted into the brood pouch. The brood pouch is quite an amazing structure as it also offers immunological protection, osmoregulation, gas exchange, and waste transport.
While this is happening, the female seahorse has completed her part of the reproductive process and goes off on her merry way. However, she will come back to visit the male seahorse on a daily basis, to say hello.
After the gestation process, the male seahorse prepares to expel the small fry from its pouch through muscular contractions. For most seahorse species, the male seahorse expels an average of 100-1000 fry's but can reach as high as 2500. Once expelled, the small fry's are on their own as seahorses do not nurture their young after birth. They spend the first 2-3 weeks of their lives drifting along in the plankton layer of the ocean.
Unfortunately, less than 0.5% of infants survive to adulthood as they are susceptible to natural predators, extreme temperatures that can be too much for their delicate bodies, or ocean currents that can sweep them away from their feeding ground.
As these small fry are left to their own devices, the adult male and female seahorses restart the reproductive process, sometimes with different partners.
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13 июн 2021
