The wingless insect, sometimes referred to as the wingless insect, is an ancient insect that prefers to be rare in high temperatures and humidity, they are rare in number, and they have a very long history. Arguably, they are the least studied of any insect family at present, and little is known about the information and habits of this insect. In 1913, the Italian entomologist F. Silvestri was the first to start the family. However, since the wingless insects found in Ghana, Sri Lanka and other places are all wingless types, they are mistaken for a class of secondary wingless insects. It was not until 1920, when another entomologist, Kuder, discovered wingless insects that it was learned that this class of insects was composed of two types, namely wingless and winged. This insect is hundreds of millions of years old, and a family of winged wingless insects can be seen in Myanmar amber that is 100 million years old.
Rare "Insect World Panda"
Although the wingless insects are widely distributed, they are very small, and they are simply the "pandas" in the insect world. The most abundant species of winged insects are mainly distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Cancer in Central and South America. In addition, wingless insects have also been found in some island countries in South Asia, as well as in africa, Oceania and other missing places. China did not have a record of the distribution of this insect before 1974, around 1974, Chinese entomologists in Xinjiang Tibet a generation of investigation, in the wild found wingless insects, and collected samples, so it was named Chinese wingless insects, thus filling the new record of Chinese wingless insects.
Why are the lack of winged insects in number
The distribution of wingless insects is quite extensive, but in addition to the more special species such as Hu's wingless insects, the vast majority of wingless insects have a very narrow distribution range due to their poor diffusion ability, and the wingless insects found on many islands are endemic to the local species. This widespread but narrow phenomenon is inextricably linked to its origins, evolution, and continental changes.
For example, how do wingless wingless insects spread across the globe? For this problem, the academic community currently unanimously believes that these wingless insects existed on the primitive continent, and later with the drift and division of the plate, the primitive wingless insects separated from each other, settled in other places, and with the long period of isolation and development, eventually formed a variety of endemic species. Therefore, the distribution of pteroptera just proves the theory that continental drift drives species evolution. In terms of habitat, wingless insects prefer to live under the bark of fallen and folded trees in evergreen broad-leaved forests, feeding on humus, fungi, etc. Their adults live with nymphs and run around and escape when frightened. Coupled with their small size, they are very difficult to find in the wild.
Morphology of the winged insects
The external form of the wingless insects is extremely small, generally less than 5 mm long, and the body color is mainly dark brown and reddish brown. The antennae are rosary-shaped and consist of 9 knots. They are composed of two main groups, namely the wingless and winged. In general, a small number of winged individuals are produced when some habitats become more crowded or for other reasons. When these winged individuals successfully spread to other, closer sites, they will shed their wings on their own, like termite wingless insects, which are very small. The wingless and winged types of wingless insects differ greatly in external morphology.
There are two main species – winged and wingless
Wingless individuals have a nearly triangular head and no compound or monocular eyes. The mouthparts are chewable, relatively intact, if there is an upper lip structure, and have sharper chewing teeth, with lower lip whiskers. The thorax consists of anterior, middle, and posterior chest. Among them, the forethia is very developed, and the middle and back chest dorsal plates are trapezoidal. The 3 pairs of feet are more developed, and the last pair of hind feet is the strongest, which can run quickly. Each segment of the abdomen has symmetrically growing bristles, and there is a pair of tail whiskers on the unternipated part of the abdomen. The ventral segments of male adults sometimes reveal hook-like external genitalia.
The biggest difference between winged and wingless types in the head is that they have a more prominent compound eye and 3 single eyes on the frontal surface. Their wings are narrow and long, with many short, thin, soft hairs, and the forewings are slightly longer than the hindwings. The wing veins are extremely simple, with only 3 forewing veins and only one "human" glyph running through the hindwing veins. After the adult has completed the migration, the wings usually fall off on their own, but there will still be a wing base remaining.
Due to the extremely rare number of wingless insects, coupled with the small size, it is not easy to collect and observe them in the wild, and this insect has almost nothing to do with human agricultural production, so for a long time there has been no biological company or investigator to invest in the study of this insect, which also caused the lack of overall knowledge of the lack of winged insects, and I hope that scientists can make up for this gap in the future.