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Eggs in jelly
Flat periwinkles place a
long and flat jelly-like sack of eggs on the seaweed where
they live. A female can lay several jelly-like sacks, each
of which can contain several hundred eggs. In the beginning
these sacks are almost transparent or white in colour, but
as the young shells develope the sacks became darker. The
young develope fully within the sacks, and when mature (0,5
mm in size), small miniature copies of their parents creep
out of the sack.
Because of its size, the periwinkle pictured
above cannot have layed the egg sack, as it has not became
sexually mature.
It is not possible to determine the specie of the egg sacks;
but most of those that are found on bladder
or toothed
wrack originate from Littorina fabalis, while those found on
knotted
wrack originate from Littorina obtusata.
Bo Johannesson
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