Enlarge / A time-lapse showing how an insect's wing adopts very specific positions during flight. (credit: Florian Muijres, Dickinson Lab)

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have classified these creatures as pterygotes, the rest of the world simply calls them winged insects.

There are many aspects of insect biology, especially their flight , that remain a mystery for scientists. One is simply how they move their wings. The insect wing hinge is a specialized joint that connects an insect’s wings with its body. It’s composed of five interconnected plate-like structures called sclerites. When these plates are shifted by the underlying muscles, it makes the insect wings flap.

Until now, it has been tricky for scientists to understand the biomechanics that govern the motion of the sclerites even using advanced imaging technologies. “The sclerites within the wing hinge are so small and move so rapidly that their mechanical operation during flight has not been accurately captured despite efforts using stroboscopic photography, high-speed videography, and X-ray tomography,” Michael Dickinson, Zarem professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), told Ars Technica.

Enlarge / A hawk moth in flight. (credit: Gregory Dubus )

Different insects flap their wings in different manners. Understanding the variations between these modes of flight may help scientists design better and more efficient flying robots in the future. However, decoding insect flight is not as easy as it sounds.

Winged insects have been around for nearly 400 million years , and the evolution of flight in different insect species influences things like how insects flap their wings, what makes some insects highly maneuverable, and how their flight muscles work. A new study has used a mix of evolutionary analysis and robotic model wings to better understand how different flight modes operate.

Insects are the most skilled flyers

There are organisms other than insects that can fly . Scientists can also take inspiration from them, so what makes insect flight so special?

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