I explored two alternate explanations for the observed patterns in immature gonozooid production.
Small colonies experienced significantly greater fitness costs in terms of colony survival, growth rate, and immature gonozooid production.
Increase in gonozooid frequency as an adaptive response to stress in Campanularia flexuosa.
Colonies are gonochoristic and polymorphic, possessing specialized reproductive polyps, or gonozooids, on which the gametes are produced.
Survival, colony width and length (omitted at the 80-d interval), and the number of immature gonozooids were recorded.
The most visible polyps are the gastrozooids (responsible for feeding), the
gonozooids (reproductive), and the tentacles, which are specialized and highly retractile polyps.