Insect wings may have evolved from gills

2024-01-05 12:03:19

Reconstruction of the K. Brauneri larva, based on all the fossil specimens discovered. – KATERINA ROSOVA

MADRID, 5 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Fossil larvae of an ancient group of Carboniferous insects found in Germany provide new evidence that insect wings they may have evolved from gills.

Despite many years of research, it is still not entirely clear from what body structure insect wings actually evolved and what their original function was. when they were not yet efficient enough to perform active flight.

There are several hypotheses about the origin of insect wings. To some extent, they depend on whether the common ancestor of winged insects lived in an aquatic or terrestrial environment. While several studies relate the origin of wings to the gills of some representatives of aquatic insects, Currently, support for the terrestrial origin of winged insects predominates.

Entomologists from the Center for Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (BC CAS), together with their German colleagues, found in a quarry in Lower Saxony new Paleozoic fossils of larvae of an ancient group of insects called Paleodictyoptera from the Carboniferous period (extinct at the end of the Paleozoic). With their body structure, these larvae resemble a hypothetical winged insect ancestor and therefore provide new clues to solve this evolutionary mystery. The results are published in Communications Biology.

In fossils, scientists have discovered several adaptations for life in an aquatic environment, in particular several pairs of flattened projections on the sides of the abdomen, which probably functioned as gills.

In the larvae they also observed three pairs of future wings on the thorax, whose detailed structure It is very similar to the gill plates mentioned above in the abdomen. Therefore, it can be assumed that these so-called wing pads also participated in the absorption of oxygen from the aquatic environment.

“Although our fossils certainly do not represent the ancestor of winged insects: they are larvae, and the adults of this group already had fully functional wings, it is still a relatively ancient group of insects. Given the fact that the larvae of other ancient insect taxa like mayflies and dragonflies are also aquatic, which supports the possibility that the aquatic environment played an important role in the early evolution of winged insects,” suggests Pavel Sroka of the BC CAS Institute of Entomology, it’s a statement.

“The first forms of flattened projections on the thorax, which gave rise to the hindwings, could have arisen as respiratory organs, functionally similar to what we see on the wing pads of our fossils,” says Pavel Sroka.