Wing Secrets That Help Insects Rule the World The...

Wing Secrets That Help Insects Rule the World

The quest of insects to achieve total world domination is wing-powered.

Insects, the only invertebrates that have learned how to fly, use their wings as key assets in their global colonization. Their wings can be protective shells, musical instruments (grasshoppers), camouflage, signals to recognize each other, a means of attracting mates or warning predators, even tools to fly.

Insects are our greatest competitor for food. They also keep the earth clean and productive. These ecosystem workhorses could easily manage without us, but we could never manage without them.

In celebration of these chitin-made wonders, we’ve collected images to take you on a tour of the insect wing world.

1.Folded Wings

An early and much-needed innovation was the ability of insects to fold their wings, demonstrated by this mayfly (order Ephemeroptera).

“Without that ability, flying is kind of awkward, like a fixed-wing aircraft,” said Dave Kavanaugh, curator of the insect collection at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

With fixed wings, dragonflies are restricted to flying in the open air. Flying through foliage or burrowing into the ground risks too much damage. Insects that fold their wings can use many more habitats.

Image: Eric Beaulieu/Flickr.

2.Translucent Wings

The dainty glasswinged butterfly (genus Greta) has pockets of transparency in its wings, which help it blend in wherever it is.

3.Hardened Wing Covers

Beetles use their front set of wings as protective covers. Many beetles, such as this ladybug (family Coccinellidae) can still fly using their second set of wings. These wings, with fewer veins, can be neatly stored under the wing covers.

“That’s probably one of the reasons that beetles are one of the most successful groups of living things,” Kavanaugh said.

“They have the ability to fly when they need to. But they can invade soil and leaf litter, they can dig right into rotting fruit and eat, and they can dig into carcasses to help recycle them. Beetles have the best of both worlds.”

Image: nutmeg66/Flickr.

4.Veined Taxonomy

Wing venation is endlessly varied. Studies of venation patterns allow entomologists to trace lineages and identify specimens, like this dragonfly (order Odonata). Separating one species from another can lie in a careful examination of the branching and cross hatching of veins.

Broad similarities across several groups probably stem from an ancestral winged insect. Models like theComstock-Needham System name typical insect veins, and suggest what the ancestral wing veins may have looked like.

Image: Jean-Christophe/Flickr.

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Posted on Sunday, 19 February
Tagged as: Science Insects Wings biology

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