PhD candidates, Sam Church and Bruno de Medeiros, Research Associate Seth Donoughe ('18), and Prof. Cassandra Extavour disprove an old hypothesis and prove a new one. The study published in Nature analyzed a large data set to challenge the untested assumptions about egg size in insects. For example, one popular assumption has been that there is some universal scaling law that means certain egg shapes can only exist at certain sizes. Analyzing across all insects -- which make up 80 percent of all animal species on Earth -- the team found no universal scaling, no restriction of certain shape eggs to certain sizes, no evidence that larger eggs take longer to develop. Looking at 3,000 papers dating back to 300 years, the team was able to prove egg size and shape is more a product of the ecology the animal inhabits. The study was featured in The Harvard Gazette and Nature featured an in-depth interview with Prof. Extavour.