1987] 
Henry & Busker — Green lacewings 
229 
Figure 2. Fertile egg production as a function of time by two females of Chryso- 
perla plorabunda, mated in the laboratory on Day 1 . Eggs were clipped on a 2, 2, and 
3 day timetable each week. 
rufilabris (Hydorn and Whitcomb, 1979; Ru et al., 1976), all reared 
on diets very similar to those we used. We are unable to explain 
these discrepancies, except to note that great variability character- 
izes the reproductive potential of lacewings of all species. Occasion- 
ally, for example, we found ourselves rearing a stock of insects with 
consistently low fecundity and high larval mortality, despite contin- 
uing efforts to avoid inbreeding. Whether such episodes were the 
results of genetic factors or disease was never resolved, but analo- 
gous problems could have unnaturally curbed egg productivity in 
the studies of others. 
An important and perhaps unexpected result of this work was the 
observed uniformity of maximal individual egg production from 
species to species. On the one hand, it may not be too surprising to 
find similar maximal fecundities in very closely related, sibling spe- 
cies like C. plorabunda and C. downesi; but more distantly related 
taxa like C. rufilabris and C. harrisii and even representatives of 
distinct genera like Chrysopa oculata also had similar individual 
lifetime egg totals. Actually, even the life-history patterns of the 
