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Insect Wings: The Evolutionary Development of Nature’s First Flyers

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Arthropod Biology and Evolution

Abstract

Powered flight is one of the more spectacular evolutionary novelties to have come about during the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth. Flight bestows upon the flyer another dimension in which to experience life. Suddenly, new avenues are available for dispersal, escape and avoidance, locating a suitable mate, and reaching once unobtainable resources. Moreover, wings can be so much more than merely a means to fly. Properly adapted the wings themselves may play a role in courtship, camouflage and mimicry, thermoregulation, and protection and defence. Despite the profound significance of flight, it is a challenging feat to achieve and control. Powered flight has evolved independently at least four times, three of which occur among the Amniota, while the last is far flung across the branches of the animal tree of life. It is this last lineage that was also the first to evolve this singularly successful means of locomotion, rivalling in numbers of species all other forms of life combined.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to A. Minelli for the invitation to contribute this brief chapter concerning wing origins and evolution. Much appreciation is given to R. Ward for his comments on an earlier draft of the section on development, to I.A. Hinojosa-Díaz and A. Nawrocki for general discussion of hexapod morphology and homology, to N.P. Kristensen, A. Nel, and A. Minelli for their comments, and to T. Ohde and T. Niimi for sharing and discussing their recent findings. Illustrative figures were executed by S. Taliaferro under the direction of M.S.E. and S.R.D. and supported by the Engel Illustration Fund, University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. We thank the President and fellows of Harvard College for permission to use MCZ copyrighted material. We are grateful to P. Perkins for permission to study and take photographs of type specimens from F.M. Carpenter’s collection housed in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University; C. Mellish and A.J. Ross for access to collections and permission to take photographs of Idoptilus onisciformis and Lithomantis carbonarius in the Natural History Museum, London; A. Nel for access to collections and permission to take photographs of Stenodictya pygmaea in the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris; L. Schöllmann for access to collections and permission to take photographs of Kemperala hagenensis in the LWL-Museum für Naturkunde, Münster; A.P. Rasnitsyn for access to and permission to photograph specimens in the Laboratory of Paleoentomology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; and T. Nichterl for permission to take photographs of Lithomanthis bohemica in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria. Partial support for this work was provided by US National Science Foundation grants DEB-0542909 (to M.S.E.) and DEB-1110590 (to M.S.E., P. Cartwright, and S.R.D.), and the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic No. P210/10/0633 (to J.P.). This is a contribution of the Division of Entomology, University of Kansas Natural History Museum.

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  1. Division of Entomology, Natural History Museum, and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, 1501 Crestline Drive—Suite 140, Lawrence, Kansas, 66045, USA

    Michael S. Engel & Steven R. Davis

  2. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, 12844, Praha 2, Czech Republic

    Jakub Prokop

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  1. Michael S. Engel
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  3. Jakub Prokop
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Correspondence to Michael S. Engel .

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  1. , Department of Biology, University of Padova, Via Ugo Bassi 58 B, Padova, 35131, Italy

    Alessandro Minelli

  2. , Zoology Department, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, United Kingdom

    Geoffrey Boxshall

  3. , Department of Biology, University of Padova, Via Ugo Bassi 58 B, Padova, 35131, Italy

    Giuseppe Fusco

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Engel, M.S., Davis, S.R., Prokop, J. (2013). Insect Wings: The Evolutionary Development of Nature’s First Flyers. In: Minelli, A., Boxshall, G., Fusco, G. (eds) Arthropod Biology and Evolution. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36160-9_12

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