Interspecific relationships between egg size and the level of parental investment per offspring in echinoderms

The relationship between the sire of an egg and its energy content was anal yzed using published data for 47 species of echinoderms. Scaling relationsh ip?; were evaluated for all species. as well as for subsets of the species, based on mode of development. Regressions were calculated using linear, po wer function, Full allometric, and second-order polynomial models. The full allometric model is preferred because it is relatively simple and the most general. Among these species of echinoderms, larger eggs contain more ener gy. Egg energy content scales isometrically across a wide range of egg size s both among and within different modes of development. The only exception is among species with feeding larval development. where there does not seem to be a clear scaling relationship. In most cases, the regressions were st atistically significant and explained a very large proportion of the varian ce in energy content. However, there were wide confidence intervals around the estimated regression parameters. In all cases, the predictive power of the regression was poor, requiring large differences in egg size to yield s ignificantly different predictions of energy content. Consequently, egg siz e is of limited value for the quantitative prediction of egg energy content and should be used with caution in life-history studies.