A tau emerald (Hemicordulia tau) dragonfly has flight muscles attached directly to its wings.
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. These may initially have been used for sailing on water, or to slow the rate of descent when gliding.
Two insect groups, the dragonflies and the mayflies, have flight muscles attached directly to the wings. In other winged insects, flight muscles attach to the thorax, which make it oscillate in order to induce the wings to beat. Of these insects, some (flies and some beetles) achieve very high wingbeat frequencies through the evolution of an "asynchronous" nervous system, in which the thorax oscillates faster than the rate of nerve impulses.
Not all insects are capable of flight. 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 castes are wingless their entire lives.
Some very small insects make use not of steady-state aerodynamics, but of the Weis-Fogh clap and fling mechanism, generating large lift forces at the expense of wear and tear on the wings. Many insects can hover, maintaining height and controlling their position. Some insects such as moths have the forewings coupled to the hindwings so these can work in unison.
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...
invertebrates that can achieve sustained powered flight; insectflight evolved just once. Many insects are at least partly aquatic, and have larvae with...
many orders of insects. Physically, some insects move their flight muscles directly, others indirectly. In insects with direct flight, the wing muscles...
crustaceans. The first insects were landbound, but about 400 million years ago in the Devonian period one lineage of insects evolved flight, the first animals...
Insect thermoregulation is the process whereby insects maintain body temperatures within certain boundaries. Insects have traditionally been considered...
in insectflight, making it even more complex and difficult to study than the flight of vertebrates. There are two basic aerodynamic models of insect flight...
known for a remark in his 1934 book Le Vol des Insectes ("InsectFlight") that insectflight was impossible. Magnan was born in the central 7th arrondissement...
Insect morphology is the study and description of the physical form of insects. The terminology used to describe insects is similar to that used for other...
appendages are detected within the rotating frame of reference of the insects' bodies. In the case of flies, their specialized appendages are dumbbell...
kingdom, each of which requires a transformation into a different insect. "Flight of the Bumblebee" is recognizable for its frantic pace when played...
nervous systems, as well as sensory organs, temperature control, flight and molting. An insect uses its digestive system to extract nutrients and other substances...
Microsystem Platform Inserted During Early Metamorphosis to Actuate InsectFlight Muscle. 20th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical...
both flight's importance in avoiding predators and its extreme demand for energy. Birds portal Flight call Flying and gliding animals Insectflight List...
slowly as a bee in flight would be much less than the weight of a bee."Dickinson, M (2001). "Solving the mystery of insectflight". Scientific American...
asynchronous muscles respond slowly to neural stimulus. In the case of insectflight, electrical stimulation alone is too slow for muscle control. For Cotinus...
the ball using the "Magnus effect". Aeronautics Aerostatics Aviation Insectflight – how bugs fly List of aerospace engineering topics List of engineering...
on the body of two orders of flying insects that provide information about body rotations during flight. Insects of the large order Diptera (flies) have...
doi:10.1130/G31182.1. Dudley, Robert (2002). "Flight and the Pterygote Insecta". The Biomechanics of InsectFlight: Form, function, evolution. Princeton University...
Thysanoptera) are minute (mostly 1 mm (0.039 in) long or less), slender insects with fringed wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. Entomologists have...
Insect traps are used to monitor or directly reduce populations of insects or other arthropods, by trapping individuals and killing them. They typically...
CROSSBRIDGES FROM TOMOGRAMS OF INSECTFLIGHT MUSCLE 1o19: MOLECULAR MODELS OF AVERAGED RIGOR CROSSBRIDGES FROM TOMOGRAMS OF INSECTFLIGHT MUSCLE 1o1a: MOLECULAR...
tissue of young mammals, or to generate heat rapidly, for example in insectflight muscles and in hibernating animals during periodical arousal from torpor...
maneuvers such as 360-degree flips. One of its uses is in studying insectflight; mimicking the extremely fast escape maneuvers of fruit flies revealed...
Insect names have appeared in music from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" to such popular songs as "Blue-tailed Fly" and the folk song La Cucaracha...
Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran suborder Rhopalocera, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together...
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