Clutch (eggs) in the context of "Amphibians"

In biology, offspring are the young creation of living organisms, produced either by sexual or asexual reproduction. Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny. This can refer to a set of simultaneous offspring, such as the chicks hatched from one clutch of eggs, or to all offspring produced over time, as with the honeybee. Offspring can occur after mating, artificial insemination, or as a result of cloning.

Human offspring (descendants) are referred to as children; male children are sons and female children are daughters (see Kinship).

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest relative was the also-extinct and flightless Rodrigues solitaire. The two formed the subtribe Raphina, a clade of extinct flightless birds that are a part of the group that includes pigeons and doves (the family Columbidae). The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos.

Subfossil remains show the dodo measured about 62.6–75 centimetres (2.05–2.46 ft) in height and may have weighed 10.6–17.5 kg (23–39 lb) in the wild. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings, paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Since these portraits vary considerably, and since only some of the illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specimens, the dodos' exact appearance in life remains unresolved, and little is known about its behaviour. It has been depicted with brownish-grey plumage, yellow feet, a tuft of tail feathers, a grey, naked head, and a black, yellow, and green beak. It used gizzard stones to help digest its food, which is thought to have included fruits, and its main habitat is believed to have been the woods in the drier coastal areas of Mauritius. One account states its clutch consisted of a single egg. It is presumed that the dodo became flightless because of the ready availability of abundant food sources and a relative absence of predators on Mauritius. Though the dodo has historically been portrayed as being fat and clumsy, it is now thought to have been well-adapted for its ecosystem.

The Inaccessible Island rail, or Inaccessible rail (Laterallus rogersi), is a small bird species of the rail family, Rallidae. Endemic to Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic, it is the smallest extant flightless bird in the world. The species was formally described by physician Percy Lowe in 1923 but had first come to the attention of scientists 50 years earlier. The Inaccessible Island rail's taxonomic affinities and origin were a long-standing mystery; in 2018 its closest relative was identified as the South American dot-winged crake, and it was decided that both species are best classified in the genus Laterallus.

The Inaccessible Island rail has brown plumage, black bill and feet, and adults have a red eye. It occupies most habitats on Inaccessible Island, from the beaches to the central plateau, feeding on a variety of small invertebrates and also some plant matter. Pairs are territorial and monogamous, with both parents being responsible for incubating the eggs and raising the chicks. Its adaptations to living on a tiny island at high densities include low base metabolic rates, small clutch sizes, and flightlessness.

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is a species of oceanic turtle distributed throughout the world. It is a marine reptile, belonging to the family Cheloniidae. The average loggerhead measures around 90 cm (35 in) in carapace length when fully grown. The adult loggerhead sea turtle weighs approximately 135 kg (298 lb), with the largest specimens weighing about 200 kg (440 lb). The skin ranges from yellow to brown in color, and the shell is typically reddish brown. No external differences in sex are seen until the turtle becomes an adult, the most obvious difference being the adult males have thicker tails and shorter plastrons (lower shells) than the females.

The loggerhead sea turtle is found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. It spends most of its life in saltwater and estuarine habitats, with females briefly coming ashore to lay eggs. The loggerhead sea turtle has a low reproductive rate; females lay an average of four egg clutches and then become quiescent, producing no eggs for two to three years. The loggerhead reaches sexual maturity within 17–33 years and has a lifespan of 47–67 years.

Clutch size refers to the number of eggs laid in a single brood by a nesting pair of birds. The numbers laid by a particular species in a given location are usually well defined by evolutionary trade-offs with many factors involved, including resource availability and energetic constraints. Several patterns of variation have been noted and the relationship between latitude and clutch size has been a topic of interest in avian reproduction and evolution. David Lack and R.E. Moreau were among the first to investigate the effect of latitude on the number of eggs per nest. Since Lack's first paper in the mid-1940s there has been extensive research on the pattern of increasing clutch size with increasing latitude. The proximate and ultimate causes for this pattern have been a subject of intense debate involving the development of ideas on group, individual, and gene-centric views of selection.