The modifications that led to insect flight probably occurred no later than 350 million years ago and are believed to have happened only once during the course of insect evolution, based on the basic ground plan of venation found in all wings and the common thoracic musculature. All pterygote...
Tsetse flieslook like common house flies, but these insects are far deadlier. Like mosquitos, they feed on the blood of mammals,transmitting diseaseslike trypanosomiasis, also known as "African sleeping sickness.” Early symptoms include aches, pains, and itching. As the disease progresses, victims...
"He had in the city of the Borysthenites [in Asia Minor] a spacious house, grand and costly (the same house I just mentioned), all surrounded by Sphinxes and Grypes (Griffins) worked in white marble."Griffin fighting Arimaspian, Athenian red-figure calyx krater C5th B.C., British Mu...
The fruit fly Drosophila, of course, is the most intensively studied insect even in this sense. Other dipterans more often studied are the house fly Musca domestica and blowflies, including our own model organism Phormia terraenovae (Collatz, 1997). The scorpion fly Panorpa vulgaris and the ...