page_title: Matriphagy
section_title: Parental investment by skin-feeding in Caecilian amphibians
hierarchical_section_title: Matriphagy / Forms of parental care similar to matriphagy / Parental investment by skin-feeding in Caecilian amphibians
caption_attribution_description: Siphonops annulatus
context_page_description: Matriphagy is the consumption of the mother by her offspring. The behavior generally takes place within the first few weeks of life and has been documented in some species of insects, nematode worms, pseudoscorpions, and other arachnids as well as in caecilian amphibians.
  The specifics of how matriphagy occurs varies among different species, but the process is best described in the Desert spider, Stegodyphus lineatus, where the mother harbors nutritional resources for her young through food consumption. The mother is able to regurgitate small portions of food for her growing offspring, but between 1–2 weeks after hatching the progeny capitalize on this food source by eating her alive. Typically, offspring only feed on their biological mother as opposed to other females in the population. In other arachnid species, matriphagy occurs after the ingestion of nutritional eggs known as trophic eggs and involves different techniques for killing the mother, such as transfer of poison via biting and sucking to cause a quick death or continuous sucking of the hemolymph, resulting in a more gradual death.
context_section_description: Caecilian amphibians are worm-like in appearance, and mothers have thick epithelial skin layers. The skin on a caecilian mother is used for a form of parent-offspring nutrient transfer. 
  The Taita African caecilian Boulengerula taitana is an oviparous (egg-laying) caecilian whose skin transforms in brooding females to supply nutrients to growing offspring. The offspring are born with specific dentition that they can use to peel and eat the outer epidermal later of their mother's skin. Young move around their mother's bodies, using their lower jaws to lift and peel the mother's skin while vigorously pressing their heads against her abdomen. To account for this, the epidermis of brooding females can be up to twice the thickness of non-brooding females.
  Viviparous (developing in the mother) caecilians on the other hand, have specialized fetal dentition which can be used for scraping lipid-rich secretions and cellular materials from the maternal oviduct lining. The ringed caecilian Siphonops annulatus, an oviparous caecilian, exhibits characteristics similar to viviparous caecilians. Mothers have paler skin tones than non-attending females, suggesting that offspring feed on glandular secretions on the mother's skin—a process that resembles mammalian lactation. This scraping method is different from the peeling actions performed by oviparous caecilians.
  For both oviparous and viviparous caecilians, delayed investment is a common benefit. Providing nutrition through the skin allows for redirection of nutrients, yielding fewer and larger offspring than caecilians who only provide their offspring with yolk nutrients. Rather than the mother sacrificing herself and solely being used for the offspring's nutrition, caecilian mothers supplement their offspring's growth; they provide enough nutrients for the offspring to survive, but not at the cost of their own life.
caption: The ringed caecilian is an example of an oviparous caecilian that exhibits parental investment through skin-feeding of the oviduct lining.
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