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Insects are the only group of invertebrates that have evolved wings and flight. Insects first flew in the Carboniferous, some 300 to 350 million years ago, making them the first animals to evolve flight. Wings may have evolved from appendages on the sides of existing limbs, which already had nerves, joints, and muscles used for other purposes.
Some can use these wings to fly; however, hybrid High Entia such as Melia, who is half-Homs, have smaller wings. The Shi'ar from Marvel Comics, a species of cold-blooded humanoids of avian descent; they resemble humans with feathered crests atop their heads in lieu of hair. Birdperson, a character from the television series Rick and Morty, is a ...
The name Palaeoptera (from Greek παλαιός (palaiós 'old') + πτερόν (pterón 'wing')) has been traditionally applied to those ancestral groups of winged insects (most of them extinct) that lacked the ability to fold the wings back over the abdomen as characterizes the Neoptera.
The more advanced groups making up the Neoptera have foldable wings, and their muscles act on the thorax wall and power the wings indirectly. [ 1 ] : 22–24 These muscles can contract multiple times for each single nerve impulse, allowing the wings to beat faster than would ordinarily be possible.
The earliest fliers were similar to dragonflies with two sets of wings, direct flight muscles, and no ability to fold their wings over their abdomens. Most insects today, which evolved from those first fliers, have simplified to either one pair of wings or two pairs functioning as a single pair and using a system of indirect flight muscles. [32]
Like the gigantic griffinflies, dragonflies lack the ability to fold their wings up against their bodies in the way modern insects do, although some evolved their own different way to do so. The forerunners of modern Odonata are included in a clade called the Panodonata, which include the basal Zygoptera (damselflies) and the Anisoptera (true ...
There are fewer differences between the larval and adult forms of Megaloptera than in any other order of holometabolous insects, and their aquatic larvae dwell in fresh water, around which the adults also live. The larvae are carnivorous, and are known to feed on small invertebrates, such as crustaceans, clams, worms and other insects. They ...
The insect order Neuroptera, or net-winged insects, includes the lacewings, mantidflies, antlions, and their relatives. The order consists of some 6,000 species . [ 1 ] Neuroptera is grouped together with the Megaloptera ( alderflies , fishflies , and dobsonflies ) and Raphidioptera (snakeflies) in the unranked taxon Neuropterida (once known as ...