[Quark]

How many Trills are bonded or unbonded? Is there usually just one? Or are there many Daxs? I would think there would be more than just one...

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

It's shown in DS9 that there is a rigorous selection process and only the best of the best get chosen to be joined, so that would mean that it is a small or even tiny fraction of the overall Trill population that ever get joined.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

And as far as I know there is only one Dax, it's the name of the symbiont. So, the Dax name is with the symbiont no matter what host it is in.

[Roysten]

Yeah pretty sure there's one Dax. Was wondering how the Trill reproduce though, is it something the symbients do before being joined? Could Dax the symbiont have children?

[Commodore]

If symbionts didn't have children, then where do new symbionts come from?

There's no way of knowing if the Dax symbiont had any children, but if it did it had to be prior to joining with his first host, Lela, sometime in the late 22nd-Century. But there is a period of roughly 150 unaccounted years between the actual birth of the Dax symbiont and Lela, where anything could have happened.

[NCC-73515]

The symbiont could use asexual reproduction... or a queen that lays eggs...

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Yes, it's never been explored that I recall so it could be almost anything really.

[Quark]

I guess the closest thing for a symbiont to have a child would be if the host has a child. Remember the symbiont, along with the host, can no longer servive if removed...for that long anyway.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

The symbionts can live outside of a host on the planet Trill, they lived in water in caves. They could survive there out in the open.

[kevin]

Given how long lived the symbiont's are you might suspect that they don't breed frequently or in large numbers. Otherwise the Trill society would need more hosts.