Month: September 2022

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

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

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

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

SINGLE EVOLUTION EVENT. "Complete metamorphosis (holometaboly) in insects evolved once, some 344 million years ago...Today, more than 60% of all described animal species are holometabolous insects... holometaboly appears to have been a key innovation in the most successful radiation of animals during evolutionary history." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

ADVANTAGE OF COMPLEX LIFE STYLE. "This increase in life cycle complexity is thought to be adaptive for two reasons: (i) it facilitates stage-specific resource utilisation and structural specialisation, such as adaptation of different sets of mouthparts for alternative food sources; and (ii) it encourages population growth by reducing intraspecific competition between stages." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

MODULAR LIFE STYLE. "Thus, the compartmentalized or ‘modular’ nature of holometabolous life cycles is thought to have enabled insects to optimize life-history components, such as growth and reproduction, through temporal partitioning." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

DECOUPLED SELECTION. "In addition, holometaboly is hypothesised to have led to increased evolvability (e.g. an increased capacity for adaptive evolution, due to an expansion of baseline phenotypic variation upon which selection can act), and a concomitant decoupling of selective pressures across different life cycle stages." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

FEMALE LOSS OF LIFE STYLE. "Yet despite the apparent virtues of holometaboly, some insects have minimised or even lost the holometabolous lifestyle, at least from some part of the life cycle. With respect to holometabolous insects that have entirely lost complete metamorphosis, this has only occurred in females, where it has been achieved via the deletion of the pupal and post-metamorphic stage (i.e. the ancestral ‘adult’), via a developmental process known as paedomorphosis." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.12313/full View in LinkedIn

BUTTERFLY PUPAE WING SCALES (1896), histological examination. "It appeared that during early pupal life the wings are as transparent as glass, but that from five to ten days before emergence, they become opaque, and pure white. After this, a dull ochre-yellow or drab color suffuses the wings, tinging all parts except those that are destined to become the white spots of the mature wing, these always remains pure white." Brilliant Victoriana! https://lnkd.in/eRTtjTc View in LinkedIn