10.5061/DRYAD.59ZW3R253
Church, Samuel H.
0000-0002-8451-103X
Harvard University
de Medeiros, Bruno A. S.
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Donoughe, Seth
University of Chicago
Márquez Reyes, Nicole L.
University of Puerto Rico at Cayey
Extavour, Cassandra G.
Harvard University
A dataset of ovariole number from more than 2,000 insect species
Dryad
dataset
2020
National Science Foundation
https://ror.org/021nxhr62
DGE1745303
2021-04-09T00:00:00Z
2021-04-09T00:00:00Z
en
1841135 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The number of offspring an organism can produce is a key component of its
evolutionary fitness and life-history. This number differs widely between
organisms, and its variation is the foundation for several hypotheses
about life-history evolution, including the prediction that there is an
evolutionary trade off between the number of offspring and their size. In
insects, the number of egg-producing compartments in the ovary, called
ovarioles, has been used as a proxy for potential offspring number in the
study of life-history. Here we present a database of 3,355 descriptions of
insect ovariole number, with records for 2,103 unique insect species from
28 hexapod orders. The dataset includes insects with a total adult
ovariole number of 1 as well as insects with more than 10,000 ovarioles.
We created this database by searching for descriptions of insect
ovaries from the primary literature. We matched the taxa in this database
to the currently accepted scientific names in taxonomic and genetic
databases, which will facilitate the use of this data for
testing hypotheses in offspring number evolution.
We searched the published literature for references to insect ovariole
number using a predetermined set of 131 search terms, entered into Google
Scholar (scholar.google.com) between June and October of 2019. Each search
term consisted of an insect taxonomic group and the words “ovariole
number”. This list was created to include all insect orders, many large
insect families, and groups well-represented in the insect egg dataset.
For each search term, we evaluated all publications in the first page of
results (ten publications). For 61 search terms that had a large number of
informative hits, significant representation, or that corresponded to very
speciose groups, we evaluated an additional 20 publications. If a
publication reported ovariole number for one or more insect species, we
recorded the following information: (1) genus, (2) species name, when
available, (3) taxonomic order, (4) sample size, when available, (5)
ovariole number, and (6) additional notes (e.g. for eusocial insects,
whether the observation was made in a reproductive or non-reproductive
individual). Ovariole number was recorded as either an average with
deviations, a range, or a single total value, with priority for recording
given in that order when multiple data types were available. Ovariole
number was recorded as the total number of ovarioles per female, summing
over both the left and right adult ovaries. When authors reported ovariole
number from a single ovary, the total value was calculated by doubling the
reported value. When authors described differences between the two
ovaries, this information was recorded in an additional notes section.
Using this approach, we gathered 3,355 records for ovariole number from
460 publications, provided here as well. We matched the scientific names
to additional taxonomic information using the software TaxReformer, and
found additional taxonomic data for 3,252 of the 3,355 records. We
verified that TaxReformer had found a valid match for the record by
comparing the originally recorded taxonomic order to the order populated
by online databases, and flagged 22 taxonomic records for which these
values did not match.
Ovariole Number Dataset A tab delimited dataset of insect ovariole
number from the published literature, including notes on data collection.
ovariole_number_data.tsv Ovariole Number Taxonomic Information A tab
delimited dataset of taxonomic information, retrieved with TaxReformer:
https://github.com/brunoasm/TaxReformer. Entries can be matched to those
in the ovariole number dataset by their unique ID number.
ovariole_number_taxonomic_info.tsv Ovariole Number Bibliography (BibTeX
format) A bibtex file of sources cited in the ovariole number dataset.
References listed here can be matched to entries in the ovariole number
dataset by their unique bibliographic identifier (e.g. Iwata1958).
bibliography_egg_dataset.bib Ovariole Number Bibliography (PDF format) A
formatted bibliography of sources cited in the ovariole number dataset.
bibliography_egg_dataset.pdf