ArticleScientific reports2017
The avian egg exhibits general allometric invariances in mechanical design.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Coupling Artificial Intelligence with Proper Mathematical Algorithms to Gain Deeper Insights into the Biology of Birds' Eggs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Brood parasitism and host-parasite relationships: Cuckoos adapt to reduce the time of hatching ahead of host nestlings by increasing egg thickness.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2024Article
- Life-History and Ecological Correlates of Egg and Clutch Mass Variation in Sympatric Bird Species at High Altitude.Biology · 2023Article
- A Comparative Study on the Microstructures, Mineral Content, and Mechanical Properties of Non-Avian Reptilian Eggshells.Biology · 2023Article
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- Parental provisioning drives brain size in birds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Designing Bioinspired Composite Structures via Genetic Algorithm and Conditional Variational Autoencoder.Polymers · 2023Article
- Ancient proteins resolve controversy over the identity ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Functional connections between bird eggshell stiffness and nest characteristics through risk of egg collision in nests.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Evolutionary divergence of anaphase spindle mechanics in nematode embryos constrained by antagonistic pulling and viscous forces.Molecular biology of the cell · 2022Article
- Elastic Moduli of Avian Eggshell.Biology · 2021Article
- How much calcium to shell out? Eggshell calcium carbonate content is greater in birds with thinner shells, larger clutches and longer lifespans.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Egg Incubation Mechanics of Giant Birds.Biology · 2021Article
- Broodmate aggression and life history variation in accipitrid birds of prey.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The avian egg exhibits extraordinary diversity in size, shape and color, and has a key role in avian adaptive radiations. Despite extensive work, our understanding of the underlying principles that guide the "design" of the egg as a load-bearing structure remains incomplete, especially over broad taxonomic scales. Here we define a dimensionless number C, a function of egg weight, stiffness and dimensions, to quantify how stiff an egg is with respect to its weight after removing geometry-induced rigidity. We analyze eggs of 463 bird species in 36 orders across five orders of magnitude in body mass, and find that C number is nearly invariant for most species, including tiny hummingbirds and giant elephant birds. This invariance or "design guideline" dictates that evolutionary changes in shell thickness and Young's modulus, both contributing to shell stiffness, are constrained by changes in egg weight. Our analysis illuminates unique reproductive strategies of brood parasites, kiwis, and megapodes, and quantifies the loss of safety margin for contact incubation due to artificial selection and environmental toxins. Our approach provides a mechanistic framework for a better understanding of the mechanical design of the avian egg, and may provide clues to the evolutionary origin of contact incubation of amniote eggs.
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