Eating pattern approach to dietary guidelines is best

Oviposition, a commonly used term to describe “laying of eggs”, is broken down into two stages, pre-oviposition and post-oviposition. Pre-oviposition comprises of “all the behaviors and factors involved in the selection of, or attraction to, an oviposition site and oviposition itself” (Downes and Lancaster 2013). Individuals locate suitable sites for their offspring by seeking visual and chemical cues throughout the environment; even the behavior through which these individuals lay their eggs depends on environmental factors. Post-oviposition occurs after the eggs have left the female and involves several different “strategies for ensuring that development of the embryo can proceed” (Downes and Lancaster 2013). Some examples include camouflaging the egg to resemble its site, “devices for attaching eggs to substrates”, and nutrient and gas exchange within the egg (Downes and Lancaster 2013). The site of oviposition is determined by behavioral and environmental cues that increase the probability of the offspring’s survival and the parent’s fitness. This is why the significance of where the organism selects to oviposit his or her offspring is crucial for their offspring’s survival, and his or her fitness.

Laying eggs is crucial part of the life cycle for oviparous animals. “An important factor affecting the life-history of an organism is parental investment in reproduction: reproductive decisions are almost invariably costly” (Kotiaho and Paukku 2008). Our experiment is focused on pre-oviposition by measuring whether or not bean beetles prefer small or large lima beans to oviposit on. Oviposition preference is dependent on size, small or large, of a lima bean.  If bean beetles prefer large lima beans, will we see any eggs deposited on small lima beans? Or, if there is no preference, will we see near-equal numbers for both categories?