Formanowicz Daniel R, Shaffer Lawrence R
Department of Biology, The University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19498, 76019, Arlington, TX, USA.
Oecologia. 1993 Jun;94(3):368-372. doi: 10.1007/BF00317111.
Among invertebrates, scorpions possess a relatively unique set of reproductive traits. The interrelationships of these traits may have important implications for life history theory, yet there have been few studies of these traits in scorpions. Our data indicate that larger female Centruroides vittatus produce more offspring and have a higher total litter mass than smaller females. There was, however, no significant relationship between offspring size and female or litter size. Mean offspring mass increased with increases in total litter mass and within litter variation in offspring size (coefficients of variation) decreased with increasing total litter mass. These results suggest that large female scorpions with a larger investment in reproduction produced more offspring that were more uniform in size, but not significantly larger, than small females with less investment. The fractional clutch principle and physiological and functional constraints on size and number of offspring are suggested as possible explanations for the relationships we found among offspring size, variation in offspring size and total investment in offspring in C. vittatus.
在无脊椎动物中，蝎子具有一套相对独特的繁殖特征。这些特征之间的相互关系可能对生活史理论具有重要意义，但对蝎子这些特征的研究却很少。我们的数据表明，体型较大的条纹正钳蝎雌性比体型较小的雌性产生更多后代，且总窝卵质量更高。然而，后代大小与雌性体型或窝卵大小之间没有显著关系。平均后代质量随着总窝卵质量的增加而增加，窝内后代大小的变异（变异系数）随着总窝卵质量的增加而减小。这些结果表明，与繁殖投入较少的小体型雌性相比，繁殖投入较大的大体型雌性蝎子产生的后代数量更多，且大小更均匀，但并非显著更大。分数窝卵原则以及对后代大小和数量的生理及功能限制被认为是对我们在条纹正钳蝎中发现的后代大小、后代大小变异和后代总投入之间关系的可能解释。
