Mastodawn

The #fossil record of #insects is pretty sparse compared to many other groups. If you copy-and-paste quantitative methods from other groups to fossil insects, it'll often be challenging & unrewarding to get things right.

But! No matter how you feel about "key innovations," if anything deserves to be called a key innovation over the last 400 Myr I'd say it's insect wings. The early fossil record of #Pterygota provides neglected opportunities to test some ideas that have widespread appeal.

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Sandra R. Schachat 🐛🪰🌳🐞🐜Nov 6, 2022

Now let's talk about moths. Nearly 100 years ago there was a major breakthrough in our understanding of #butterfly #wing patterns. The majority of #Lepidoptera aren't #butterflies, they're #moths. How do butterfly wings fit in with broader wing pattern #evolution in this order?

I found that the relationship between wing pattern & wing #venation in moths is so iron-clad that I was able to predict—and then find—a wing #vein in Lepidoptera that was previously known only from #caddisflies.

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