Do insects need to wear clothes?
Although in many televisions, insects have their own cute clothes, the little cricket Jimini is very gentlemanly in a suit and a top hat. But for hundreds of millions of years, insects have managed to infiltrate every corner of the planet "naked," relying on hard exoskeletons to protect themselves from predators and environmental hazards.
So, how do unclothed insects perceive and respond to nature's temperature?
Is it hot or cold?
As we all know, we are thermostatic animals, also known as warm-blooded animals.
The thermostat system can control the body temperature to keep at 37 degrees Celsius, so we need air conditioning when it is hot, and we need to wear clothes to keep warm when it is cold.
The human body has developed a variety of mechanisms to retain heat and expel it from the body when necessary.
Sweating, goosebumps, and shivering are all ways our bodies try to maintain optimal temperatures, and other mammals have their own strategies, such as thick fur and panting.
Unlike thermostatic animals, thermotropic animals are often referred to as cold-blooded animals, including reptiles and amphibians. Their body temperature fluctuates with the temperature around them, typically snakes and crocodiles, who love to sunbathe in order to maintain the temperature
Which of these two classifications does insects belong to?
Insects do not fall entirely into the category of warm-blooded or cold-blooded animals, as they have an astonishing diversity in morphology, behavior, and adaptation.
Traditionally, most insects are considered to be thermostats, but not entirely, insects such as wasps, bees, moths, butterflies, and beetles are thermostatical.
Thermostatic animals are able to regulate the temperature of the body according to external conditions, especially the temperature of certain body parts, and they often have the ability to selectively heat or cool certain body parts.
Wings, not just for flying
Imagine if your arms were shaped like wings, and in order to fly, you had to keep waving your arms, hard and requiring a lot of energy.
To produce all of the energy needed to fly, insects must have a rapid metabolism, but the metabolic response in the body is not always effective.
Insects produce a lot of heat and energy by controlling the muscles of their wings.
Flying can not only absorb heat, but also release heat.
Flying increases the insect's blood circulation and dissipates heat throughout the body.
Heat from the chest, where the wings are located, is transferred to the abdomen, which is lost by evaporation.
The abdomen, like a radiator, can "store" heat when it is cold, and like a heat distributor when it is too hot.
When the temperature is low, insects tend to warm up first.
Low temperatures are not suitable for flying, because the metabolic reaction required for flight is not fast enough in low temperature conditions.
To overcome this, insects do some warm-up activities, using the heat wasted by flapping their wings for cold weather. They flap their wings back and forth vigorously, akin to trembling, and generate heat without flying, basically preheating their flight "engine" a few minutes before takeoff.
Are invalid loops really useless?
Fortunately, shivering isn't the only way to heat up.
Several studies have found that when bees are warming up, an "ineffective cycle" also known as a substrate cycle occurs.
In layman's terms, it is two opposite steps, two opposite paths: glycolysis, decomposition of glucose: gluconeogenesis, synthesis of glucose.
Glucose + atp→ glucose-6-phosphate + adp (glucosamine)
Glucose-6-phosphate + h2o→ glucose + pi (glucose 6 phosphatase)
It is "ineffective" because, on the surface, the cycle has no net utility for living things. But from a circular point of view, it is a process of consuming ATP.
ATP is the energy currency of the cell, the cell obtains energy by breaking down atp, and producing more ATP also produces a lot of heat. Executing this cycle repeatedly consumes atp quickly, without actually doing any work. Cells have to work overtime to maintain a satisfactory supply of atp, and therefore provide more heat as well.
Under normal circumstances, these two reactions do not occur at the same time. Cells either undergo glycolysis or undergo gluconeogenesis.
Some bees have the ability to initiate this cycle to generate heat.
Is it cold today?
In order to use these cool methods to control body temperature, insects must first know whether it is hot or cold outside.
They do this through a set of receptors on the antennae, which are called transient receptor potential channels, or trp channels for short.
These receptors are sensitive to changes in ambient temperature and transmit information to the insect's nervous system.
Studies have shown that blocking certain receptors can cause insect body temperatures to fall below normal levels, while blocking other TRP channels can cause insect temperatures to be higher than normal.
Interestingly, these TRP channels were preserved during evolution, meaning that dna from humans and insects had some of the same genes or instructions to detect temperature.
At last
Although humans and insects have similar genes to sense temperature, insects do not need to dress or sweat like humans because of their small size.
The little cricket Jimmini in Pinocchio looks well-dressed, but it is actually superfluous.