''Mariaglaja tsurugensis'' is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

sea slug Sea slug is a common name for some Marine biology, marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial Slug, slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are Sea snail, sea snails (marine gastropod moll ...

, or "headshield slug", a marine

opisthobranch Opisthobranchs () is a now informal name for a large and diverse group of specialized complex gastropods which used to be united in the subclass Opisthobranchia. That taxon is no longer considered to represent a monophyletic grouping. Euopistho ...

gastropod Gastropods (), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and fro ...

mollusk Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The ...

in the family

Aglajidae Aglajidae is a family of often colorful, medium-sized, sea slugs, marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks. These are not nudibranchs; instead they are headshield slugs, in the clade Cephalaspidea The order Cephalaspidea, also known as the ...

. This species lives from Tanzania to Australia.Rudman W. B. (1998)
"''Chelidonura sandrana''"
Sea Slug Forum, accessed 25 may 2011.

Ecology

''Mariaglaja tsurugensis'' is a simultaneously hermaphroditic species. Contrary to classic theoretical predictions, Sprenger et al. (2011) have shown for the first time that the

mating In biology, mating is the pairing of either opposite-sex or hermaphroditic organisms for the purposes of sexual reproduction. ''Fertilization'' is the fusion of two gametes. '' Copulation'' is the union of the sex organs of two sexually repr ...

rate is largely unresponsive to variations in mate availability in this simultaneous hermaphrodite. With mating rates being close to the female fitness optimum, their findings challenge the prevailing notion of male-driven mating rates in simultaneous hermaphrodites, and call for complementary investigations of mating-rate effects on fitness through the male sexual function.

References

* This article incorporates CC-BY-2.0 text from the referenceSprenger D., Lange R. & Anthes N. (2011). "Population density and group size effects on reproductive behavior in a simultaneous hermaphrodite". ''

BMC Evolutionary Biology ''BMC Ecology and Evolution'' (since January 2021), previously ''BMC Evolutionary Biology'' (2001–2020), is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering all fields of evolutionary biology, including phylogenetics and palaeontology ...

'' 11: 107. .
Yonow N. (2012) ''Opisthobranchs from the western Indian Ocean, with descriptions of two new species and ten new records (Mollusca, Gastropoda).'' ZooKeys 197: 1–129. [22 May 2012]

Ecology

References

Further reading