Written by Youth Leader, Jackson Carter
Boulder’s February café featured Dr. Marah Hardt, a marine biologist who specializes in the reproduction methods employed by various marine life-forms. Her area of focus is on corals and coral reef production, both present day and prehistorically. She began her talk by asking students the question “why sex?” She then explained that sexual reproduction allows species to diversify their gene pool and is facultative for evolutionary advancement. The oceans provide us with oxygen, food, medicines, etc…, making it a crucial part of the global ecosystem and essential for human development and activity on earth. Dr. Hardt introduced us to several examples of marine reproduction and their mating habits. She began her explanation of individual species with the osedax, a bizarre bone-eating worm with dramatically different sizes between members of the opposite sex. She then went on to talk about salmon. Their reproductive strategy is so physically demanding that the fish die quickly thereafter. Yikes, I’ll never look at them the same! She then described seahorses, that court and synchronize by dancing through seagrass. With cod, the males produce high-frequency vibrations to time fertilization perfectly. Clownfish undergo sex changes as they mature, this develops a hierarchical system to organize such evolutions. Finally, there was the octopi, which pass a specialized tentacle known as hectocotylus to their spouses.
