By Christy Solo – ONPA 1st Place Award Winner for Best Local Column
This week we’re going to go on a crawly egg hunt! Anyone can find a brightly colored Easter Egg (okay, unless they have an uncle like mine who put a silver dollar in a blue plastic egg then dropped it into the swimming pool), but we’re going hunting for arthropod eggs!
Arthropods are the very best egg hiders on the planet. Who can blame them when so many critters want to either eat or parasitize those bitty eggs?
Not only do arthropod eggs come in a huge range of sizes, shapes and colors, but mother arthropods have some sneaky ways of hiding eggs, and some moms go all out and guard their eggs.
We do have to admit that sometimes arthro mums don’t do the best camouflage job, like our green stinkbug laying her eggs on a window screen. Just right out there for anyone to find. Luckily it worked out for this specific bug and all the eggs hatched.
For land-dwelling arthropods, “under stuff” is the favored egg laying tactic. Often the spot eggs are laid beneath is part of the kiddos food plant. Though not always. Some young arthropods will have a bit of a walk ahead of them before they find something edible (such as those green stinkbug babies).
Box elder bugs will lay their eggs under pretty much any available leaf even though the main food source for the kiddos is seeds. Of course box elder bugs of any age aren’t super persnickety eaters, they’ll also eat fruit, bird poop and carrion. So their “any leaf will do” philosophy isn’t a bad one.
Generally true bugs also lay their eggs all at once in clusters. Their “safety in numbers” philosophy can fail spectacularly if just one parasitic wasp lays her eggs one by one inside each bug egg. Often as not though, the wee wasps will only hit half of the bug eggs, so babies of each species will hatch out.
Butterflies such as our pictured two-tailed swallowtail and monarch butterfly are more discerning. Both of these butterfly moms lay eggs one at a time on a single leaf of the host plant and they spread the eggs out. For monarchs the host plant is milkweed. Two-tailed swallowtails have a few food plant options; our pictured mom chose a chokecherry.
Green lacewings lay arguably the most elegant and artistic eggs. They’ll lay eggs on “any old plant” or sometimes human-made materials. Their young dine on soft-bodied arthropods such as aphids, so newly hatched lacewings will almost always have a readily available meal. Often newly hatched critters will first eat their eggshells before moving off to find other food sources.
Lacewings protect their eggs from predators by laying each egg singly at the end of a long filament, this keeps the eggs off of the plant proper – where potential egg thieves generally look. It also has a camo effect; the eggs appear to be floating in thin air and thus seem inaccessible.
Spiders, mantids and other arthropods go in for the “build a fortress around your eggs” method of protection. While no fortress is impenetrable, tightly woven silk and/or liquid egg casings which harden to cement-like-hardness do offer up far more protection than soft-shelled eggs laid by most critters.
Of course many species of spiders go the extra mile and guard their egg sacs as well. Most keep the eggs in one place, then stand guard, putting themselves at high risk of dying of starvation even before their eggs hatch – a mother’s sacrifice.
Wolf spiders developed a more mobile option, they secure their egg sacs to their abdomens, leaving them free to move around (albeit a bit awkwardly) and able to both protect the kiddos and grab a hearty meal.
Eggs for nymphs who will live their juvenile months – or even years – under water are also hidden in various ways. Some dragonflies lay their eggs into the silt at the bottom of standing water or slow-moving streams, some drill holes into rotting wood so their eggs have extra protection. Some damselflies have the ability to adhere their eggs to grasses or bits of submerged wood.
Other riparian insects such as stoneflies and caddisflies simply drop their egg masses into the water (or very close to it) from above and hope for the best.
Several (hundred?) beetle species lay their eggs in rotting wood or under bark. Others lay their eggs underground. Of course carrion beetles lay their eggs in carrion, it’s right there in the name.
While we definitely don’t recommend some “arthropod hiding places” for this year’s egg hunt, maybe nature will inspire you to come up with some clever new hiding spots for this years colored eggs.
Enjoy this slide show with more hidden arthropod eggs!
