I cannot make sense of this in Wikipedia article. If the ovaries contain hundreds of eggs from birth, how do they decide that at time T egg number N is going to be released while all the others should stay?
I don’t know how the first egg to get going gets going - maybe it’s just marginally more sensitive to hormones than the others - but once it does, there is a hormone released by the follicle that prevents others from preparing for ovulation.
Of course, it’s not unknown to have two or more naturally released during ovulation (such as with fraternal twins), and the kinds of hormones used during fertility treatments can make even more of them go for it at once.
Several eggs are released at around the same time, the one that best responds to the hormone grows and develops quicker and faster than the others, so it’s sort of a natural selection at play. One of the egg basically out competes the other nearby eggs for resources, and eventually the others will shrivel up and decay, while the egg whose genes have sensitized it the most to respond to the hormones and growth is the “fitter” egg that gets to continue on towards towards ovulation and release of this egg. So basically, it’s the most genetically “fit” one, in terms of being the most sensitive to hormones and being able to out compete the other eggs at responding to the hormones by having more receptors, faster growth, or whatever it is that allows it to basically become the biggest one. Also, it’s a little bit of logic there, once one egg gains the advantage in terms of size at getting the resources and such, it’s going to continue to get more of the resources, as it’s going to be larger, bigger, and have more receptors to continue to take away the resources, in a sense, “the fit get fitter”.
But it’s basically the egg that out competes the others.
Now as for how those initial 8-10 eggs are chosen out of the thousands and thousands of eggs to be released? That I’m not sure of, if I had to make a WAG, I’d say proximity or location might have something to do with it? But I’m not sure on that first choice of which group of eggs go each month.
Sorry, don’t have the link, but the Master addressed this (mostly) way back.
IIRC ; In summary - you’re not born with a whole bunch of eggs with one popping out for duty periodically, and eventually the gumball machine goes empty and you’re in menopause. It’s more like you’re born with proto-egg material and as long as your body produces a certain hormone, one or more whole eggs gets produced each period. Menopause is when your body stops producing the hormone.
It is an elaborate process involving alliances, imunity idols, tribal council, and eventually one getting voted out.