Repeated loss of variation in insect ovary morphology highlights the role of development in life-history evolution.

ABSTRACT: The number of offspring an organism can produce is a key component of its evolutionary fitness and life history. Here we perform a test of the hypothesized trade-off between the number and size of offspring using thousands of descriptions of the number of egg-producing compartments in the insect ovary (ovarioles), a common proxy for potential offspring number in insects. We find evidence of a negative relationship between egg size and ovariole number when accounting for adult body size. However, in contrast to prior claims, we note that this relationship is not generalizable across all insect clades, and we highlight several factors that may have contributed to this size-number trade-off being stated as a general rule in previous studies. We reconstruct the evolution of the arrangement of

SUBMITTER: Church SH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8097220 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature