The vast majority of living insects either have wings or evolved from flying ancestors, said Linz, an evolutionary biologist now at Indiana University. “When the average person thinks about an insect ...

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 ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The insect world teems with beautiful and dazzling species ...

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 ...

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 ...

In 1870, a German anatomist named Karl Gegenbaur was the first person to theorize that abdominal gills on water insects like mayflies eventually developed into wings. For the next 150 years, ...

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 ...