Insect egg morphology: evolution, development, and ecology

•Insect eggs span more than eight orders of magnitude in volume.•Insect egg shapes vary in asymmetry, aspect ratio, and curvature.•The external surfaces of insect eggshells have a broad diversity of textural features.•The descriptive efforts of entomologists have resulted in a potent collective dataset.•This dataset can be used to illuminate topics in evolution, development, and ecology.