(The following was originally posted under the forum topic 'Eggs vs tiny water globules...' and is being copied/redirected here as per the OP's request.)

'...Just looked at your tree cricket egg photo--wow! Very nice and intriguing! Have never seen a mesh-like 'cap' on an insect egg before, but I'm going to assume just from the look and orientation of it that it's designed to wear down and become somewhat friable over time so that the baby inside can break through easily and escape once hatching time rolls around. To be honest, it reminds me quite a lot of the foamy pods and capsules grasshoppers and mantids whip up in order to protect their egg clusters, except that this foamy-looking little bit is incorporated into the egg itself, isn't it? I wonder too whether this isn't the one spot of this particular egg that mightn't be permeable enough to allow for some transfer of water vapour, to help regulate the developing egg's moisture levels? It just kind of has that 'look' about it...

I don't actually know that much about insect eggs, but believe they start off fully formed right from the start and mature to full size within the female before fertilization occurs...I don't think there's quite as much of an assembly line process involved as takes place within a chicken hen, for example (a single 'yolk' leaves the ovary, then accumulates several layers of white, then the membrane, then the shell, etc, on its way to becoming that one egg a day). What comes out in the end is still a complex little package, though, and the best quick summary I could find on short notice to appreciate this comes from an old study of phasmid eggs. The best, relevant lines:

'The egg is covered by three main envelopes: a hard, brittle exochorion built of seven distinct layers, two of
which consist almost solely of calcium salts; a double-layered, membranous endochorion;
a thin vitelline membrane. Layers of the chorion may be summarized as
follows:
(i) exochorion—tubercular layer, dark layer, lamellar membrane, calcium oxalate
layer, intermediate lamella, calcium carbonate layer, shell membrane,
(ii) endochorion—outer and inner membrane.'

The full paper is at http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/s3-91/14/183.pdf and makes for a nice read. Interestingly, the author's last few paragraphs, wherein he ponders the possibility that the loss of minerals within the egg envelope is somehow connected to the development of the embryo within is a question which a poultry enthusiast/friend could've likely answered for him: a very probable 'yes'! Dunno if that part of it HAS in fact since been confirmed...has it? (Experts?)'