ArticleScientific data2019
A dataset of egg size and shape from more than 6,700 insect species.
Article in Scientific data, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Molecular detection tool for prompt, reliable and precise diagnosis of the rice weevil,Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Coevolution between eggs and sperm of insects.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A morphological traits dataset of Heteroptera sampled in biodiversity priority areas of Southwest China.Scientific data · 2024Article
- The evolution of ovary-biased gene expression in Hawaiian Drosophila.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
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- Nuclear speed and cycle length co-vary with local density during syncytial blastoderm formation in a cricket.Nature communications · 2022Article
- SpermTree, a species-level database of sperm morphology spanning the animal tree of life.Scientific data · 2022Article
- Parental dietary protein effects on offspring viability in insects and other oviparous invertebrates: a meta-analysis.Current research in insect science · 2022Review
- Pollen wall patterns as a model for biological self-assembly.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2021Article
- Repeated loss of variation in insect ovary morphology highlights the role of development in life-history evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- ThePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- How to escape from insect egg parasitoids: a review of potential factors explaining parasitoid absence across the Insecta.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Review
- There and back again: A sperm's tale.Molecular reproduction and development · 2020Article
- A dataset of egg size and shape from more than 6,700 insect species.Scientific data · 2019Article
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Abstract
Offspring size is a fundamental trait in disparate biological fields of study. This trait can be measured as the size of plant seeds, animal eggs, or live young, and it influences ecological interactions, organism fitness, maternal investment, and embryonic development. Although multiple evolutionary processes have been predicted to drive the evolution of offspring size, the phylogenetic distribution of this trait remains poorly understood, due to the difficulty of reliably collecting and comparing offspring size data from many species. Here we present a dataset of 10,449 morphological descriptions of insect eggs, with records for 6,706 unique insect species and representatives from every extant hexapod order. The dataset includes eggs whose volumes span more than eight orders of magnitude. We created this dataset by partially automating the extraction of egg traits from the primary literature. In the process, we overcame challenges associated with large-scale phenotyping by designing and employing custom bioinformatic solutions to common problems. We matched the taxa in this dataset to the currently accepted scientific names in taxonomic and genetic databases, which will facilitate the use of these data for testing pressing evolutionary hypotheses in offspring size evolution.
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