What is fecundity

Words nearby fecundity fecula , feculent , fecund , fecundate , fecundation , fecundity , fed , fedayee , feddan , fedelini , federacy. Words related to fecundity fertility , fruitfulness. Welfare Reform? Buffon's Natural History. Montaigne and Shakspere John M. The Book of Curiosities I. The capacity for producing offspring, especially in abundance. Get Word of the Day delivered to your inbox! Sign Up.

Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of fecund. Medical Definition of fecund. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. Love words? Need even more definitions?

Just between us: it's complicated. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively".

Here, of course, the energy investment is not in terms of parental care, however, it is in terms of energy-rich quality seeds. Plants with low fecundity will produce a few or limited numbers of seeds with high energy which thereby have the higher or maximum possibility of survival, for example, coconuts.

On the other hand, plants with higher fecundity will produce a large number of seeds e. Thus, the survival chances of these seeds would therefore be low. Another important aspect of fecundity and ecology is the time of reproduction. Again, the population can be divided into two basic groups depending on the time when an organism starts to reproduce:. Parity is indicative of the number of any individual that can reproduce in its life span.

Some organisms can reproduce their progeny only once in their lifetime while others can exhibit multiple reproductions. Thus, fecundity can follow two patterns:. In iteroparity, the fecundity increases with age and then eventually decreases. Thus, the organism stops growing once they reach reproductive maturity and are ready for their first progeny production.

This is to conserve all their energy to invest in the process of reproduction. This is a kind of ecological pattern to increase fecundity. Both the parent as well as the progeny would not be physically competent to withstand the environmental pressure i. Thus, unfit or incompetent organisms or individuals would be eliminated from the system. Some of the factors affecting fecundity are explained below. These factors include body size, environmental conditions, are choice of a mating partner.

Metabolic rate, dispersal capacity, survival probability, and fecundity are some of the factors that cause the disparity in body mass among individuals or species. However, it is important to understand that in a species, the ratio of combined offspring mass to maternal mass tends to roughly remain constant.

This means that females with larger bodies tend to have higher fecundity and larger offspring. Thus, evolutionarily, a larger body gives a selective advantage to large-sized females and their offspring. The fecundity is affected by environmental conditions. Environmental conditions can affect maternal body condition and survival. Thus, affecting the fecundity. The theory of mate selection is based on the fact that a female may select a superior mating partner in order to increase the fecundity.

The selection of a superior mating partner is linked to producing genetically healthy and better-quality offspring with high fecundity. Certain species are involved in multiple mating. This is again linked to selecting a superior mating partner. Nevertheless, multiple mating can be huge energy investing activity for females.

Multiple mating results in the improvement of fecundity due to the fact that egg production is stimulated by mating, fresh sperms help to maintain the fertility of eggs, egg production rate also increases with the mating.

Multiple mating results in sperm-sperm competition. Two sperms compete to fuse with the ova. Again, by the theory of survival of the fittest, the sperm that apparently is superior will eventually fuse with the ova. This results in the formation of a zygote likely with a viable genetic constitution. Males usually have higher fecundity than females. Fecundity is an essential component of studying the population composition model.

To understand the life history strategy and the factors affecting the, it is equally important to study population fecundity, fertility, and survival rate.

Different models are employed to study their cumulative effect on the life history strategy of a population. One such model is the stage-structured matrix population model.

This model mathematically summarizes the population behavior using stage-specific estimates of vital rates rates of birth, growth, maturation, fertility, and mortality and it gives a relationship between the individual and its selective pressures and the population. This model gives a stable stage distribution which gives an estimate of the theoretical population composition that exhibits a fixed birth rate. Thus, the factors like the variation in the environment or any other intrinsic regulatory factor that change the theoretical population composition can be graded to study and predict their effect on the composition of the population.

This model also gives the contribution of an individual to the future status of its population by taking into account fecundity, fertility, and survival rate. This is known as the reproductive value which essentially is the sum of the current and future reproductive values.