Why some insect eggs are spherical while others look like hot dogs
A new database is helping scientists test ideas of how the diverse forms have evolved
By Yao-Hua Law
Look at the nail of your pinky finger. That’s about the width of the biggest known insect egg, which belongs to the earth-borer beetle Bolboleaus hiaticollis. The smallest egg, from the wasp Platygaster vernalis, is only half the width of the thinnest recorded human hair.
Insect eggs range across eight orders of magnitude in size, and come in a stunning variety of shapes, a new database of almost 10,500 descriptions of eggs from about 6,700 insect species shows. The Harvard University team behind the database thinks it’s figured out one reason why. In a separate analysis, the researchers determined that where insects lay their eggs — for example, in water or in the bodies of other critters — helps to explain some of the diversity that’s evolved over time. The database and study were both published July 3 in Scientific Data and Nature, respectively.