Matrotrophy is a form of maternal care during organism development, associated with live birth (

viviparity Among animals, viviparity is development of the embryo inside the body of the parent. This is opposed to oviparity which is a reproductive mode in which females lay developing eggs that complete their development and hatch externally from the m ...

), in which the

embryo An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sperm ...

of an animal or flowering plant is supplied with additional nutrition from the mother (e.g. through a

placenta The placenta is a temporary embryonic and later fetal organ (anatomy), organ that begins embryonic development, developing from the blastocyst shortly after implantation (embryology), implantation. It plays critical roles in facilitating nutrien ...

). This can be contrasted with lecithotrophy, in which the only source of nutrition for the embryo is

yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...

originally contained within its

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

Vegetal matrotrophy

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

. 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 ''Sphagnum'' is a genus of approximately 380 accepted species of mosses, commonly known as sphagnum moss, peat moss, also bog moss and quacker moss (although that term is also sometimes used for peat). Accumulations of ''Sphagnum'' can store wa ...

'', the

endoplasmic reticulum The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is, in essence, the transportation system of the eukaryotic cell, and has many other important functions such as protein folding. It is a type of organelle made up of two subunits – rough endoplasmic reticulum ( ...

extensive, mitochondria numerous and large,

chloroplasts A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant and algal cells. The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, and stores it i ...

numerous, often less differentiated, rich in lipid-filled globuli and sometimes filled with starch.

Animal matrotrophy

While commonly associated with

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxon, taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with vertebral column, backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the ...

s and especially mammals, matrotrophy is found in 21 of 34 animal

phyla Phyla, the plural of ''phylum'', may refer to: * Phylum, a biological taxon between Kingdom and Class * by analogy, in linguistics, a large division of possibly related languages, or a major language family which is not subordinate to another Phyl ...

, and is fairly common in 11 of those. It has arisen independently in more than 150 clades within

Chordata A chordate () is an animal of the phylum Chordata (). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five synapomorphies, or primary physical characteristics, that distinguish them from all the other taxa. These five ...

and in more than 140 clades amongst

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

References

* Goffinet B, Et al. 2009. Morphology and classification of Bryophyta. In Bryophyte Biology 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. {{Animalbirth Embryology

Vegetal matrotrophy

Animal matrotrophy

See also

References