Abstract: Fish as the most amount of vertebrate have evolved various reproductive modes, which undoubtedly represent one of the most critical life-history traits because they deeply affect fitness, survival and species continuity of fishes, and reproduction for adaption of changeable environments. In fishes, the reproduction modes not only contains the common oviparity and viviparity which is close to terrestrial animal in Chondrichthyes, but also the transition mode of ovoviviparity, somewhere in between as well. Until now, more and more fish species with different reproduction modes have been found and studied globally with the rapid development of technology, accompanied by the rising of the problem which the barrier of definitions of these modes are getting vaguer. In the present review, the reproduction modes of teleost are re-defined and classified into 4 classifications: ovuliparity, oviparity, ovoviviparity and viviparity. The relationship between zoogeographic distribution of ovoviviparous fish species and evolution of the unique reproduction mode are described as well. In reproduction physiology, some critical processes in ovoviviparous fish species including gametogenesis and gonad mature, development of copulatory organ, sperm storage and pregnancy maintaining are evaluated and compared as well. Finally, the future research directions of this field including mating behavior, sperm storage and multiple paternity are prospected.
2020, Vol. 35 
