A dataset of ovariole number from more than 2,000 insect species

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.