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Insect wings are adult outgrowths of the insect exoskeleton that enable insects to fly. They are found on the second and third thoracic segments (the mesothorax and metathorax ), and the two pairs are often referred to as the forewings and hindwings , respectively, though a few insects lack hindwings, even rudiments.
A number of apterous insects have secondarily lost their wings through evolution, while other more basal insects like silverfish never evolved wings. In some eusocial insects like ants and termites, only the alate reproductive castes develop wings during the mating season before shedding their wings after mating, while the members of other ...
[116] [117] Most insects gain aerodynamic lift by creating a spiralling vortex at the leading edge of the wings. [118] Small insects like thrips with tiny feathery wings gain lift using the clap and fling mechanism; the wings are clapped together and pulled apart, flinging vortices into the air at the leading edges and at the wingtips. [119] [120]
Earwig wing anatomy. One tegmen opened, the other removed to show wing folding mechanism. The term tegmen refers to a miscellaneous and arbitrary group of organs in various orders of insects; they certainly are homologous in the sense that they all are derived from insect forewings, but in other senses they are analogous; for example, the evolutionary development of the short elytra of the ...
The feathery wings of thrips, however, generate lift by clap and fling, a mechanism discovered by the Danish zoologist Torkel Weis-Fogh in 1973. In the clap part of the cycle, the wings approach each other over the insect's back, creating a circulation of air which sets up vortices and generates useful forces on the wings.
Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- di-"two", and πτερόν pteron "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced mechanosensory organs known as halteres, which act as high-speed sensors of rotational movement and allow dipterans ...
There are two basic aerodynamic models of insect flight. Most insects use a method that creates a spiralling leading edge vortex. [19] [20] Some very small insects use the fling-and-clap or Weis-Fogh mechanism in which the wings clap together above the insect's body and then fling apart. As they fling open, the air gets sucked in and creates a ...
The Comstock–Needham system is a naming system for insect wing veins, devised by John Comstock and George Needham in 1898. It was an important step in showing the homology of all insect wings. This system was based on Needham's pretracheation theory that was later discredited by Frederic Charles Fraser in 1938. [1]