Insects Introduction into what insects are, their diversity and behaviour.

Insects

• Introduction into what insects are, their diversity and behaviour

Praying mantid (Paratenodera ardifolia)

• Satoshi Kuribayashi (Lennart-Nilsson-Preis 2006)

Japanese tiger beetle (Cicindela japonica)

• Photo by Satoshi Kuribayashi

Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia)


Rhinoceros beetles (Allomyrina dichotoma)


Beetle Apriona japonica

• Photos by Satoshi Kuribayashi

Locusta migratoria


Ant worker Messor aciculatum carries flower bud to the nest


Insect bauplanInsect bauplan

headhead abdomenabdomenthoraxthorax

Adult insects have 3 major body regions, six legs (on pair on each segment of the thorax), one pair of antennae and usually two pair of wings as adults (attached to last two segments of thorax).

Some characteristics of insects

• Invertebrate – exoskeleton

• Segmented body

• Dorsal heart

• Largely terrestrial

• Metamorphosis

Insects have compound eyes

Eye of the lesser houseflyPolarisation vision

UV sensitivity

The insect nervous system

• brain

• ventral nerve chord organised into ganglia (local nervous centres – one per segment)

Insect breathing

• Insects have no lungs!

• Have a network of air tunnels (tracheae)

• Openings to outside are called spiracles

Insects and others

Insect orders

Coleoptera

Lepidoptera (Butterflies &moths)

Diptera (Flies, mosquitos andgnats)

Hymenoptera (wasps, ants,bees, sawflies)

28 Small orders: Dragonflies,grasshoppers, termites, lice,true bugs, cicadas, fleas etc.

Social insects

• Most are hymenoptera, e.g. ants, wasps and bees (but there are also 10s of thousands of solitary species among the bees and wasps)

Consider this:

• Social insects, had “invented” division of labour, agriculture, castes, slavery, territorial wars, consensus building, “cities” with fantastic architecture and a symbolic “language” - 10s of millions of years before there were humans.

Slave making ants• Ants of the Polyergus samurai species pulling out larvae

and pupae of the Formica japonica species from the entrance of the nest they have raided.

“Agriculture” in ants

• Leafcutter ants collect leaves to feed fungi in their nest

Division of labour

• Age polyethism in honeybees

Different morphologies for different specialists

• Worker ant (left) of the species Pheidole nodus species feeding a soldier of the same species (right)

Termite skyscrapers

•

http://www.orbitforkids.com/yellow/dt_yellow_waggle.html

Karl von Frisch 1886-1982(Nobel prize 1973)

How does the dance encode direction?

Consensus building

• Finding a suitable nest site: bee swarms

From: Leadbeater & Chittka 2007 Current Biology

Consensus building in bees

From Leadbeater & Chittka 2007

How can we measure the adaptive benefits of communication?

• The bee dance language as a model

Jamming the information content of the waggle dance

oriented danceoriented dance disoriented dancedisoriented danceFrom Dornhaus & Chittka 2004 Behav Ecol Sociobiol

Measuring foraging success

12,035 kg

Daily weight changes of a beehive can be measured on a scale - this reflects mostly nectar intake

0

20

40

60

80<

-0,3

00

-0,3

00

-0,2

00

-0,1

00

0,0

00

0,1

00

>0

,20

0

Weight change of beehive in kg

% o

f d

ays

with disoriented dances

with oriented dances

Temperate habitat (Central European)

0

20

40

60

80

<-0

,30

0

-0,3

00

-0,2

00

-0,1

00

0,0

00

0,1

00

>0

,20

0


% o

f d

ays



Temperate habitat (Mediterranean)

0

20

40

60

80<

-0,3

00

-0,3

00

-0,2

00

-0,1

00

0,0

00

0,1

00

>0

,20

0


% o

f d

ays



Tropical habitat (India) - days of high nectar intake are missing without

location communication

temperate

tropical

c d

c d

Spatial aggregation in tropical and temperate habitats

Tropics Temperate

The honeybees originated in tropical Asia

Insects Introduction into what insects are, their diversity and behaviour.

Documents

Transcript of Insects Introduction into what insects are, their diversity and behaviour.