Data from: The effect of egg size on hatch time and metabolic rate: theoretical and empirical insights on developing insect embryos

Body size scaling relationships allow biologists to study ecological
phenomena in terms of individual level metabolic processes. Recently,
dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory has been shown to offer novel insights
on the effect of body size on biological rates. We test whether DEB theory
and its unique partitioning of biomass into reserve and structural
components can explain the effect of egg size on hatch time and the time
course of respiration in insect embryos. We find that without any
parameterization (calibration), DEB theory is able to predict hatch time
for eggs sizes spanning four orders of magnitude from fundamental
biological processes. We find, however, that the standard DEB model poorly
predicts the time course of respiration, particularly in early embryonic
development where a strong effect of egg size is observed. Further, we
show that other theoretical models also poorly predict early embryonic
respiration. By modifying the assumption that a fresh egg is entirely
reserve, we show that embryonic respiration and hatch time can be better
predicted by the DEB model. Useful theories in metabolic ecology, such as
DEB theory, can help explain universal scaling patterns in development
times. However, simple theoretical models must be expanded if they are to
capture the scaling of metabolic rate in insect eggs.