Question

what are the comparison and contrasting differences between sea urchins and peach trees and their life cycles and why would there's the sea urchin life cycle not be as productive as the peach trees life cycle

Answer 1

Prunus persica (peach), is an angiosperm tree native to China that belongs to Rosaceae family grown throughout the warmer temperate regions in northern and southern hemisphere. one peach tree could produce 30 kg of fruits (each fruit may weigh 150 g; or, 25 flowers/feet in a 10 feet long tree), i.e approximately at least 200 fertile offsprings per year multiplied by 12 (average productive life span)=2400 offsprings. Being an angiosperm, they also follow the alternation of generation, i.e there are two separate multicellular generations in the life cycle of peach tree, gametophyte and sporophyte.

Sea urchins, are the animals of warm water belonging to family Strongylocentrotidae. Unlike the peach tree, the sea urchins observe external fertilisation which occurs outside the body in a watery environment, i.e.  the females expel hundreds of millions of orange eggs, and males release their clouds of white sperm in their aquatic environment which fuses with and fertilise the egg. This is particularly susceptible to environmental damage. They do not observe two separate multicellular generations in their life cycle. in a 25 years of sexually productive life span,they can produce 500 million eggs. However, sea urchin offspring can take up to six years to reach their full maturity and are a vulnerable prey until and have extremely small rate of adult conversion as compared to a peach tree and are hence not as productive.