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Behind the female’s bottomless appetite is the extraordinary size of her egg case, or ootheca, a frothy proteinous mass studded with up to 400 eggs that can amount to half her body weight.

Dr. Brown, of SUNY-Fredonia, and Katherine L. Barry of Macquarie University in Australia showed that cannibalized males sired about 60 more eggs than did non-cannibalized fathers, an increase of 20 percent over the standard ootheca complement of 258 eggs.

Oötheca: the covering or case over an egg mass, as in certain Orthoptera: see egg case.

Egg-case: the case or covering prepared or secreted by an insect to contain or hold together the egg-mass as a whole: see oötheca.

Ampulla: Orthoptera; an extensile sac between head and prothorax used by the young in escaping from oötheca, and later, in molting: Heteroptera; a blister-like enlargement at the middle of the anterior margin of the pro-thorax.