Ants are everywhere. Eggs are a good source of protein. It feels like if an insect lays eggs, they have a high chance to just be discovered and scavenged by ants. What prevents this from happening, or do ants prioritize other source of foods over eggs?
In: Biology
You’re right. Ants will scavenge insect eggs all the time. Ants will eat anything, and everything can.
Insects hide their eggs in various ways. In fruit, in other animals’ skin, in rotting bio matter, up in tree leaves, and so on. The other method is they just lay shitloads of eggs and hope for the best.
If the ants find the eggs, nothing. But insects don’t just plop eggs down where ants can find them. Solitary bees and wasps build nests out of mud and clay, usually high up off the ground in a tree or something. Butterflies lay eggs hidden under leaves. Beetles bury them. Spiders (not insects) make egg sacs protected by their webs, and by the spider.
Ants aren’t the only predator, either. Pretty much anything that finds eggs will want to eat them, and that’s true of pretty much all species at all sizes that lay eggs. Even ants aren’t safe, as there are a few species that have learned to invade, either by deception or by force, to steal ant eggs and larva. Even other ant colonies or species!
As a result, pretty much all species have some strategy to protect their eggs. Sometimes it’s literally the parent standing over them and protecting them. They might have hard shells, camouflaged colors, burying them, hiding them in trees or islands, or even just making *so many* that, statistically, some will make it.
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