FLICKR, IAN SUTTON
During fertilization, some pairings of mussel sperm and eggs work better than others—but how do the best couples find one another in the open ocean? New research, published online Tuesday (March 20) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, raises that possibility that chemicals released by eggs may help sperm find not just any eggs, but the ones that will have the most successful fertilizations.
“You have some crosses that work well or don’t work as well, and they seem to have data here that there is a contribution of chemoattractants,” said Michael McCarthy, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina Wilmingham who was not involved in the research.
In the open ocean, mussels and other invertebrates release their eggs and ...
