The specimen is the first wingless male beetle ever found. By Sofia Quaglia The insect in the small specimen collection of Lund University in Sweden looked out of place. “OK, this is a prank,” ...

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 ...

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have ...

The content discusses the anatomy and flight mechanics of three main groups of flying animals: insects, birds, and bats. Flying insects, such as flies, butterflies, and dragonflies, have thin, ...

The evolution of wings not only allowed ancient insects to become the first creatures on Earth to take to the skies, but also propelled their rise to become one of nature's great success stories, ...

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 ...

Insect wings represent a pivotal evolutionary innovation that has underpinned the remarkable radiation of the Insecta. This field, at the intersection of evolution and developmental biology (evo-devo) ...

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 ...