warning: the motion picture we are going to enjoy today is not friendly to insect phobia and dinosaurs.

but I must say, these little guys are really super cute! They are like neatly arranged smiling faces, but also like a flock of probe birds. Of course, the similarity is limited to before they climb out of the eggshell.

(original video source: Kyoto University and Forestry And Forest Products Research Institute)

this is actually a picture of the nymph of Halyomorpha halys breaking its shell. In nature, the eggs of tea-wing bugs are often laid on the lower surface of plant leaves, and the eggs are neatly arranged together, with about 28 in each group. At first, the eggs looked white or light green translucent, and as the nymphs developed, there was a smile-like pattern on the egg shell: the red dots were the eyes of the nymphs. The black triangle like the beak is the egg breaker (a T-shaped structure to be exact), a tool for these little guys to open the egg shell.

(photo source: Wil Hershberger)

I can see it for a long time just by enjoying the egg with a smiling face (I've only seen it more than 50 times. ), but the scientist who recorded this picture will obviously not be satisfied with it. Their focus is on the pace at which these eggs hatch: this cluster of eggs is almost synchronously broken from its shell, as if it had been negotiated, what signals are used to unify the pace between individuals?

A study published recently in current Biology suggests that the signal that allows bug babies to come out of their shells synchronously is actually vibration. When the first nymph breaks its shell, it produces a vibration when it breaks its shell, and its developed siblings begin to break the shell as soon as they feel the vibration signal.

in order to determine this, the researchers conducted a number of experiments. They arranged the two groups of eggs on the drawing paper in different ways, some leaning together, some at a distance, and some separated by several dead eggs in the middle. To see if the two eggs can hatch synchronously under different conditions (that is, whether the second egg will break its shell within 15 minutes of the first egg hatching). They also recorded and reproduced the vibration signals produced when the eggs broke their shells.

(then because of the smiley face, the pictures of each group of experiments look very cute. )

so why do bugs have to hatch so synchronously? In fact, it is a matter of life and death: soon after hatching, the nymphs of tea-winged bugs eat the eggs that have not hatched. So once a nymph in a group of eggs moves, its brothers and sisters have to start breaking their shells immediately, and if they fall behind, they may not be able to survive.

finally, I would like to introduce the cutest thing in this study-the graphic summary!

cute enough to be made into an expression by me immediately (

Resources:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31490-8

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/science/stink-bug-eggs-hatch.html

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