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Incubation time as an important influence on egg production and distribution into clutches for sauropod dinosaurs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Graeme D. Ruxton ,
Geoffrey F. Birchard  and
D. Charles Deeming
Graeme D. Ruxton
Affiliation:
School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9TH, U.K. E-mail: graeme.ruxton@st-andrews.ac.uk
Geoffrey F. Birchard
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, U.S.A.
D. Charles Deeming
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN2 2LG, U.K.
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Abstract

Individual egg size and clutch size of the largest of the dinosaurs (the sauropods) are both smaller than might be expected for such large oviparous organisms. We suggest that these effects can be understood in the light of likely incubation times of sauropod eggs. Using allometric relationships from extant birds and crocodilians, we estimate that time from laying to hatching was likely to have been 65–82 days. If total predation risk varies with length of incubation time, there may be egg sizes above which the advantages of larger initial hatchling size are outweighed by the increased risk of predation during the egg stage. Also, in seasonal environments there will often be a finite limit to the period over which environmental temperatures are high enough for egg development. Thus incubation time may have been an important constraint explaining the small individual size of sauropod eggs. We further suggest that for sauropods spatial dispersal of eggs in small clutches was an adaptive strategy to mitigate this high predation risk associated with long time of exposure in the egg stage. Such a dispersive strategy brings several benefits. Thus, incubation time may also be key to explaining the surprisingly small clutch sizes.

Type
Featured Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Summer 2014 , pp. 323 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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