Hi Mike,
Sorry for the delayed response from my side. I have a question; Do you have detached indexes? I mean, is your indexes are created in other space than where the tables are created? If your answer is No, then your are in serious trouble.
Assume that a table has an initial extent of 'n' number of pages by default. It is possible that it might contain primary key, which is enforced via a unique index, again on which a dba has no control as for the storage location specification is concerned. Hence, certain pages out of those 'n' number of pages will be used for primary index storage. You may have non-primary indexes present too. Again it will also be split or adjusted with those 'n' number of pages. This way the extent will fill-up in faster pace and next extent will be spawned, leading multiplicity of extents.
On the contrary, if you have created the indexes in separate dbspace, you get most of the pages present in the extent for index storage barring bit-map stored (overhead) pages. As a result you get a contiguous index storage area, leading to less fragments and extents.
Theoretically speaking, a detached index should derive its initial and next extents from the attached table definition. However, in practice it does not! I have notice around 10-20% reduction in effective index extent usages. That means if you got a table having initial extent size of 80,000 Kb, you will have a index intial extent of around 68,000 Kb. or evern lesser. But, it obvious that greater the size of table exetents, greater would be the index extents too.
Regards,
Shriyan