{"id":20799,"date":"2022-09-22T17:37:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T15:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/?p=68004"},"modified":"2022-09-22T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T15:53:10","slug":"do-any-insects-give-birth-to-live-young","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/do-any-insects-give-birth-to-live-young\/","title":{"rendered":"Do any insects give birth to live young?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Richard Jones\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 22 September 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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\u00a0 <\/span>The norm is for insects to lay eggs, ranging from 2\u20135 in the large dung beetles to 750,000 in the peculiar, bee-parasitising Strepsiptera<\/i>. But a small number of species have made the fairly simple jump to viviparity (laying live larvae or nymphs<\/a><\/strong>). <\/span><\/p>\n

The best known are aphids, whose complex life-cycles include a<\/span> phase of generating live nymphs that already contain developing embryos. This all-female cloning allows for rapid colony growth in times of plenty.<\/p>\n

A few blowflies are larviparous (the eggs hatching inside the female shortly before they are deposited), giving the maggots a head-start in frenetically competitive micro-habits such as dung or carrion.<\/p>\n

The blood-sucking tsetse flies of Africa have taken this to the extreme. Each female broods a single egg in her abdomen, and when it hatches she feeds it protein-rich secretions in an organ analogous to a womb. Only when the larva is fully grown does she lay, at which point her offspring pupates into the chrysalis stage to change into an adult.<\/p>\n

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