A trophic egg is an egg whose function is not reproduction but nutrition; in essence, the trophic egg serves as food for offspring hatched from viable eggs. In most species that produce them, a trophic egg is usually an unfertilised egg. The production of trophic eggs has been observed in a highly diverse range of species, including fish, amphibians, spiders and insects. The function is not limited to any particular level of parental care, but occurs in some sub-social species of insects, the spider A. ferox, and a few other species like the frogs Leptodactylus fallax and Oophaga, and the catfish Bagrus meridionalis.
Parents of some species deliver trophic eggs directly to their offspring, whereas some other species simply produce the trophic eggs after laying the viable eggs; they then leave the trophic eggs where the viable offspring are likely to find them.
The mackerel sharks present the most extreme example of proximity between reproductive eggs and trophic eggs; their viable offspring feed on trophic eggs in utero.
Despite the diversity of species and life strategies in which trophic eggs occur, all trophic egg functions are similarly derived from similar ancestral functions, which once amounted to the sacrifice of potential future offspring in order to provide food for the survival of rival (usually earlier) offspring. In more derived examples the trophic eggs are not viable, being neither fertilised, nor even fully formed in some cases, so they do not represent actually potential offspring, although they still represent parental investment corresponding to the amount of food it took to produce them.
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