News Animals

This bug’s all-in helicopter parenting reshaped its eggs

Rounder eggs gave way to more elongated shapes that fit better under mom

A little brown and yellowish bug sits on a leaf with rows of eggs visibile under its abdomen.

Closely packed tiny green eggs ­— more like little pudgy barrels than mini beach balls — fit efficiently under a parent shield bug poised to defend them.

Shin-ichi Kudo

By Susan Milius

Parents will fret, even among bugs. And even among bugs, it’s complicated.

Ferociously protective parenting has evolved four times among the pointy-faced, wide-bodied little leaf dwellers called shield bugs, researchers report in the May Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society.