Part One
EGG

Incubation time is short—eight or nine days—during which the egg is vulnerable. While the mother is able to protect the eggs after completing her metamorphosis (see Chapter 19), that still leaves between thirty-five and forty hours during which the eggs would be entirely without protection, were it not for the help of a male who has undergone his own metamorphosis after fertilizing the eggs (see Chapter 18) and now returns, as it were, to stand guard while the mother is helpless, as will be covered in more detail during the discussion of the levidopt.

     It must be stressed that it is not, in particular, the father who returns to guard the eggs, but rather the first unattached male levidopt to pass within fifty feet or so of the transforming mother. Exactly how the male levidopt finds the eggs . . .

—Oscaani: Fauna of the Middle South: A Brief Survey,
Volume 6, Chapter 15