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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

DOWNSIZING. "Ancient WGDs in diploid lineages have undergone a fractionation of the polyploid genome, during which chromosomal rearrangements, gene conversions, heightened transposon activity, and epigenetic changes left behind a reduced set of duplicate gene pairs." (WGD = whole genome duplication). https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

Fireworks of the future? Japan to create fake shooting stars 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