Word of the Week: Fecundity

The words fecundity and fertility are often confused, but there is a subtle difference. Fecundity is the ability of an animal or insect to produce offspring. Species with high fecundity tend to be those whose offspring are less likely to develop into adults. In cases where few eggs are laid, fertilized, or hatched, the adult female is biologically equipped to help its species remain by giving its young the best chance at survival.
The Wildlife Medical Clinic at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Veterinary Medicine explains that typically, animals with high fecundity spend their energy in the production of many offspring that do not require much care—think mice. Alternatively, animals with low fecundity produce fewer offspring, and have more energy to care for those offspring—like cattle.
Likewise, in the insect world, some bugs lay thousands of eggs at a time, while others lay just a few in their lifetimes. Those laying a lot of eggs might have a complicated lifecycle that requires them to be consumed by a mammal to develop—for example, roundworms. Those that lay only a few eggs might have their reproduction timed just right to coincide with a host plant flowering—such as the Dieunomia triangulifera bee, which feeds on the pollen of sunflowers.