Litinsects

Litinsects #12: Batesian Mimicry Taking a look at this picture, what is the first insect you think of? I’m sure many of you said a bee. But if you look closely, you’ll notice that this is actually a fly! (Only two wings!) In fact this fly exhibits a form of mimicry in nature known as BATESIAN MIMICRY.  This is named after Henry Walter Bates, who noticed the phenomenon while studying butterflies in the Brazilian rainforest. Some species were so similar that he initially could not tell them apart but looking at them more closely, he realized they were not even closely related As we know, many organisms have evolved chemical or mechanical defenses to avoid predators. This is often advertised through APOSEMATIC SIGNALS (bright coloration = stay away from me, I’m dangerous!). In Batesian mimicry, a MIMIC copies the coloration of a MODEL’S signal, thereby telling predators to “stay away” although they really don’t have any defenses In the case of these flies, they ha...

Litinsects #7: Halteres Let’s talk about nomenclature for a second... Lots of species’ scientific names are composed of Greek words that somehow describe the group or a defining feature of the group. A bunch of insect groups include the ending –ptera because, you guessed it, most insects have wings! The scientific name of flies is DIPTERA, which should be relatively easy to decipher... it means TWO WINGS! But wait a minute, you may be saying to yourself, all winged insects have 4 wings right?! Yes they do, BUT o ne pair of wings can sometimes be modified into other structures. If you remember from beetles 🐞 , the forewing has been modified into elytra and they use only their hindwings to fly. Well in flies, the hindwings have been modified and they use only their forewings to fly. The second wing pair has been reduced to small structures called HALTERES. Halteres oscillate rapidly during flight, detecting rotations and perturbations. Flies use sensory info...