Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Insect egg size and shape evolve with ecology, not developmental rate

Samuel H. Church, View ORCID ProfileSeth Donoughe, View ORCID ProfileBruno A. S. de Medeiros, View ORCID ProfileCassandra G. Extavour
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/471946
Samuel H. Church
1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: church@g.harvard.edu extavour@oeb.harvard.edu
Seth Donoughe
1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
2Current address: Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Seth Donoughe
Bruno A. S. de Medeiros
1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Bruno A. S. de Medeiros
Cassandra G. Extavour
1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
3Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Cassandra G. Extavour
  • For correspondence: church@g.harvard.edu extavour@oeb.harvard.edu
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

1 Abstract

The evolution of organism size is hypothesized to be predicted by a combination of development, morphological constraints, and ecological pressures. However, tests of these predictions using phylogenetic methods have been limited by taxon sampling. To overcome this limitation, we generated a database of more than ten thousand observations of insect egg size and shape from the entomological literature and combined them with published genetic and novel life-history datasets. This enabled us to perform phylogenetic tests of long-standing predictions in size evolution across hexapods. Here we show that across eight orders of magnitude in egg volume variation, the relationship between egg shape and size itself evolves, such that predicted universal patterns of scaling do not adequately explain egg shape diversity. We test the hypothesized relationship between size and development, and show that egg size is not correlated with developmental rate across insects, and that for many insects egg size is not correlated with adult body size either. Finally, we show that the evolution of parasitism and aquatic oviposition both help to explain the diversification of egg size and shape across the insect evolutionary tree. Our study challenges assumptions about the evolutionary constraints on egg morphology, suggesting that where eggs are laid, rather than universal mathematical allometric constants, underlies egg size and shape evolution.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted November 29, 2018.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Insect egg size and shape evolve with ecology, not developmental rate
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Insect egg size and shape evolve with ecology, not developmental rate
Samuel H. Church, Seth Donoughe, Bruno A. S. de Medeiros, Cassandra G. Extavour
bioRxiv 471946; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/471946
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Insect egg size and shape evolve with ecology, not developmental rate
Samuel H. Church, Seth Donoughe, Bruno A. S. de Medeiros, Cassandra G. Extavour
bioRxiv 471946; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/471946

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3589)
  • Biochemistry (7553)
  • Bioengineering (5498)
  • Bioinformatics (20742)
  • Biophysics (10305)
  • Cancer Biology (7962)
  • Cell Biology (11624)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6596)
  • Ecology (10175)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13586)
  • Genetics (9525)
  • Genomics (12824)
  • Immunology (7911)
  • Microbiology (19518)
  • Molecular Biology (7647)
  • Neuroscience (42014)
  • Paleontology (307)
  • Pathology (1254)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2195)
  • Physiology (3260)
  • Plant Biology (7027)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1294)
  • Synthetic Biology (1948)
  • Systems Biology (5420)
  • Zoology (1113)