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TEMPORAL PARTITIONING. "Insects with complete metamorphosis (holometaboly) are extremely successful, constituting over 60% of all described animal species. Complete metamorphosis confers significant advantages because it enables organisms to optimise life-history components through temporal partitioning, and thereby to exploit multiple ecological niches." https://lnkd.in/e7E_keD View in LinkedIn

DEATH-GROWTH BALANCE. "Despite dramatic differences between hemimetaboly and holometaboly, both types of metamorphosis require a temporally regulated balance between cell death of nymphal/larval tissues and growth and morphogenesis of adult ones." http://www.pnas.org/content/111/19/7024.full View in LinkedIn

TWO TYPES OF METAMORPHOSIS. "All immature animals undergo remarkable morphological and physiological changes to become mature adults. In winged insects, metamorphic changes either are limited to a few tissues (hemimetaboly) or involve a complete reorganization of most tissues and organs (holometaboly)." https://lnkd.in/eHvncf7 View in LinkedIn

COMMON FEATURE IN DIVERSITY. "Despite the great diversity among insects that belong to different orders, metamorphosis, a biological process by which the adult organism is formed through a series of gradual changes, represents a common feature." https://lnkd.in/eED2fPx View in LinkedIn

KEY INNOVATION. "Metamorphosis has been a key innovation in insect evolution, which had a decisive influence on the dramatic diversification of this animal class, with around one million presently described species." https://lnkd.in/e-GPevs View in LinkedIn

METAMORPHOSIS "facilitates ontogenetic specialization including diet, reducing competition between juveniles and adults and also more effective control of development." The advantages of soup for brains. https://lnkd.in/eTSQd9X View in LinkedIn

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ORGANISMS. "Endopterygote insects—a monophyletic group which are united by complete metamorphosis with internal wing and genitalia development in larval stages—are the most successful living organisms in both species diversity and abundance. One key factor in their success appears to be their life cycle, which includes complete metamorphosis, and hence differentiation between juvenile and adult forms." https://lnkd.in/eTSQd9X View in LinkedIn

BRILLIANT time-lapse film of Monarch butterfly metamorphosis both as the caterpillar changing into the chrysalis and then emerging from it as an adult butterfly. https://youtu.be/ocWgSgMGxOc View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends covers aspects of the magical subject of butterfly metamorphosis. Of nature's stranger exhibits, this surely is one of the best. So much work had to have reasons. "In the 1830s a German naturalist named Renous was arrested in San Fernando, Chile for heresy. His claim? He could turn caterpillars into butterflies." Perhaps it is a heresy. https://lnkd.in/ey33NMW View in LinkedIn