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INFLEXIBLE PLUMBING SYSTEM. "Unlike many other ectotherms, in insects, gas exchange takes place through a system of tubes, the tracheae, that lead directly to the cells of the mitochondria, where oxygen acts as an electron receptor during respiration. The exceptionally high power demands of insect flight, coupled with this gas exchange system, led early physiologists to conclude that large modern flying species may be at their performance limits." https://lnkd.in/dcXHB7K View in LinkedIn

COPIER. "A hypercycle occurs when an enduring sub-population increases in number until it becomes co-dominant with a dominant species. The species forming the enduring sub-population is not self-maintaining, but acts as a copier for the dominant species." https://lnkd.in/dryBAUG View in LinkedIn

"GIANT INSECTS, with wingspans as large as 70 cm, ruled the Carboniferous and Permian skies. Here we show, using a dataset of more than 10,500 fossil insect wing lengths, that size tracked atmospheric oxygen concentrations only for the first 150 Myr of insect evolution." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn

PEAK OF GIGANTISM. "Gigantism as a hallmark of competitive superiority appears to have lost its luster on land after the Mesozoic in favor of alternative means of achieving dominance, especially including social organization and coordinated food-gathering." https://lnkd.in/dv_ZqB3 View in LinkedIn

LARGE VERSUS SMALL. "It has long been known that very large plants and animals are functionally unlike their smaller counterparts: they are more likely to be top consumers or producers, to tolerate a greater range of environmental conditions (at least in the case of animals), to maintain internal homeostasis more effectively, to be less vulnerable as adults to lethal predation, to compete more successfully for mates (again mainly in animals) and to be more prone to extinction during times of crisis." https://lnkd.in/dv_ZqB3 View in LinkedIn

BIRDS BECAME BETTER PREDATORS. "The gradual reduction in maximum insect size and extinction of large-bodied groups adapted for gliding flight also coincided with the gradual acquisition of key flight characteristics, such as an alula and fused pygostyle, important for low-speed flight performance and maneuverability, in early birds." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn

TERRESTRIAL VS AERIAL. "This trend is primarily the result of body-size changes in large flying insects, such as dragonflies (but also in grasshoppers), and ground-dwelling groups, such as many beetles or cockroaches, may not follow the same pattern because the history of terrestrial predation differs from that of aerial predation." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn

SMALL AND NIMBLE. "Maneuverability plays a key role in aerial predation and predator evasion, and scales inversely with body size in flying insects, suggesting that size-selective predation pressure by flying birds is a plausible explanation for the weakening and ultimate decoupling of the size-oxygen relationship." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn

EMERGENCE OF BIRDS. "Maximum wing length closely tracked atmospheric pO2 before 140 Ma, but became decoupled from pO2 trends and is better explained by a model of stasis after 130 Ma. The timing of the oxygen-size decoupling coincides with the Early Cretaceous diversification of birds, between their first appearance in the latest Jurassic (Archaeopteryx, ca. 150 Ma) and the presence of diverse assemblages 25 Myr later." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn

AREA TO VOLUME LIMITATIONS. "Flying insects should be particularly susceptible to variations in atmospheric pO2 because their flight musculature has high energy demands, particularly during periods of active flight. The volume occupied by tracheae, tubes that transport oxygen throughout the body, scales hypermetrically with body volume, imposing further surface area-to-volume constraints on maximum size." https://lnkd.in/dEANyiE View in LinkedIn