Eggs Stick to Waxy Surface

small brown eggs are hanging from a thin green branch against a blurry green background

Biological Strategy

Common asparagus beetle

AskNature Team

Image: Tomasz Klejdysz / Shutterstock / Some rights reserved

Attach Permanently

A living system can conserve energy by attaching permanently to a particular site because it can take advantage of resources that come its way, rather than expending energy to move to resources. A permanent attachment, intended to last the lifetime of the living system, creates special challenges. For example, physical mechanisms, such as the anchor that holds a marine algae to the ocean’s bottom, must be able to withstand forces that can pull it off its substrate. Chemical mechanisms, such as a barnacle’s glue, must avoid both physical and chemical breakdown, such as being dissolved by water.

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Insects

Class Insecta (“an insect”): Flies, ants, beetles, cockroaches, fleas, dragonflies

Insects are the most abundant arthropods—they make up 90% of the animals in the phylum. They’re found everywhere on earth except the deep ocean, and scientists estimate there are millions of insects not yet described. Most live on land, but many live in freshwater or saltwater marshes for part of their life cycles. Insects have three distinct body sections: a head, which has specialized mouthparts, a thorax, which has jointed legs, and an abdomen. They have well-developed nervous and sensory systems, and are the only invertebrate that can fly, thanks to their lightweight exoskeletons and small size.

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Eggs of the asparagus beetle attach firmly to waxy plant surfaces using proteinaceous secretions.

“Plant surfaces covered with crystalline epicuticular waxes are known to
be anti-adhesive, hardly wettable and preventing insect
attachment. But there are insects that are capable
of gluing their eggs to these surfaces by means of proteinaceous
secretions.
In this study, we analysed the bonding region
between the eggs of Crioceris asparagi and the plant surface of
Asparagus officinalis…Mean pull-off force was 14.7 mN,
which is about 8650 times higher than the egg
weight…Our results support the hypothesis that the mechanism of insect egg
adhesion
on micro- and nanostructured hydrophobic plant
surfaces is related to the proteinaceous nature of adhesive secretions
of insect
eggs. The secretion wets superhydrophobic surfaces
and after solidifying builds up a composite, consisting of the
solidified
glue and wax crystals, at the interface between the
egg and plant cuticle.” (Voigt and Gorb 2010:895)