It sounds like a just-so story—“How the Insect Got its Wings”—but it’s really a mystery that has puzzled biologists for over a century. Intriguing and competing theories of insect wing evolution have ...

Insects took to the empty skies sometime between 300 million and 360 million years ago, long before birds, bats or pterosaurs. Wings allowed them to conquer new habitats and ecological niches, and ...

In a remarkable scientific achievement, researchers have made significant strides in understanding the intricate biomechanics of insect wings, with a particular focus on the wing hinge mechanism of ...

Insects dominate this world. More than 70 percent of the described species on Earth are insects. What made them so successful? Their wing, says Yoshi Tomoyasu, associate professor of biology at Miami ...

Researchers have shown that the wings of insects are not as fragile as they might look. The characteristic network of veins found in the wings of grasshoppers helps to capture cracks, similar to ...

A handful of new studies moves the needle toward a consensus on the long-disputed question of whether insect wings evolved from legs or from the body wall, but the devil is in the details. For more ...

The hinge enables insects to control their wing movements, but how it works is hard to study. Multidisciplinary research, using imaging and machine-learning methods, now sheds light on the mechanism ...

Modern insects are versatile wing conversationalists. Crickets can scrape a leg against a wing or rub two wings together. Some grasshoppers beat their wings like castanets; others crackle and snap the ...

A closer look at seemingly drab, transparent insect wings has revealed realms of previously unappreciated color, visible to the naked eye yet overlooked for centuries. Until now, the wing colors of ...

The wing of a fruit fly, viewed against a white background, looks very ordinary. It is transparent, with no obvious colours except for some small brownish spots. But looks can be deceptive. If you put ...

Beetle wings are often hidden. Nestled behind armoured shields on the beetle’s back, they unfurl in whirring sheets, whisking their clumsy owners from danger. Beetles don’t have more than two sets of ...