• Question: How do insects reproduce?

    Asked by 10kingstonm to Lyn, Paul, PB on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      Hi 10kingstonm- love this question!

      insects are amazingly varied, and so the way they reproduce is varied as well! However, there are some things which are the same for all of them:

      – there are separate males and females
      – they all lay eggs
      – they all produce loads and loads of young (any idea why?)

      But the way in which they do this exactly varies a huge amount! for example:

      – Fireflies produce light to attract a mate
      – in bees, unfertile eggs become males, fertile ones become females
      – in some insects, the eggs hatch inside the mother
      – after ants have mated, the male dies!

      Hope this helps- ask another question for more info:-)

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 28 Jun 2013:


      Paul’s covered nearly everything! There’s only one more point I’d like to add – insects basically just live to reproduce, so quite often the parents won’t live long enough to see their babies hatch (insects that live in huge colonies, like bees and ants, are exceptions because they actually take good care of their young). Some types of insects take quite unusual steps to make sure their babies survive – like laying their eggs inside another insect, for example! The parasitoid wasp often lays its eggs inside the body of caterpillars, so that the wasp larvae hatch inside the caterpillar and eat it from the inside out! By the time the baby wasps come out from the caterpillar, they will have changed (undergone metamorphosis) into adult wasps, perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

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