ABOVE: Milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus, lay eggs that start as yellow and turn orange as the embryo develops inside. In the oldest eggs, the folded legs and two small red eyes of the soon-to-be hatchling can be seen peeking through the egg shell.
IMAGE BY SAMUEL CHURCH AND BRUNO DE MEDEIROS
The famed evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen once said that “evolution is the control of development by ecology.” Nowhere is that clearer than in a new database of measurements of more than 10,000 insect eggs of diverse sizes and shapes created by a team of researchers at Harvard University. In a study of the collection published today (July 3) in Nature, the researchers report that the habitat of where the eggs are laid—not geometric scaling laws that determine animals’ proportions or other life history traits—explains the diversity of egg size and shape across insects.
“The greatest merit of this study ...
