Meresman Y, Husak J F, Ben-Shlomo R, Ribak G
School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel.
Department of Biology, University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN 55105, USA.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Apr 15;7(4):200277. doi: 10.1098/rsos.200277. eCollection 2020 Apr.
Insect wing shapes and the internal wing-vein arrangement are remarkably diverse. Although the wings lack intrinsic musculature to adjust shape actively, they elastically deform due to aerodynamic and inertial loads during flapping. In turn, the deformations alter the shape of the wing profile affecting the aerodynamic force. To determine how changes in wing-vein arrangement affect elastic wing deformation during free flight, we compared elastic wing deformations between free-flying rose chafers () and dung beetles (), complementing the comparison with wing static bending measurements. The broader relevance of the results to scarab beetle divergence was examined in a geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of wing-vein arrangement in 20 species differing in phylogeny and ecology. Despite rose chafers and dung beetles demonstrating similar flapping kinematics and wing size, the rose chafer wings undergo greater elastic deformation during flapping. GM analyses corrected for phylogenetic relatedness revealed that the two beetles represent extremes in wing morphology among the scarab subfamilies. Most of the differences occur at the distal leading edge and the proximal trailing edge of the wing, diversifying the flexibility of these regions, thereby changing the pattern of elastic wing deformation during flapping. Changes to local wing compliance seem to be associated with the diversification of scarab beetles to different food sources, perhaps as an adaptation to meet the demands of diverse flight styles.
昆虫的翅膀形状和内部翅脉排列极为多样。尽管翅膀缺乏主动调节形状的内在肌肉组织，但在拍打过程中，它们会因空气动力和惯性载荷而发生弹性变形。反过来，这些变形会改变翼型的形状，从而影响空气动力。为了确定翅脉排列的变化如何在自由飞行过程中影响翅膀的弹性变形，我们比较了自由飞行的蔷薇金龟子（ ）和蜣螂（ ）的翅膀弹性变形，并通过翅膀静态弯曲测量来补充这一比较。我们在对20种在系统发育和生态方面存在差异的物种的翅脉排列进行几何形态测量（GM）分析时，研究了这些结果与金龟子分化更广泛的相关性。尽管蔷薇金龟子和蜣螂表现出相似的拍打运动学和翅膀大小，但蔷薇金龟子的翅膀在拍打过程中会经历更大的弹性变形。校正了系统发育相关性的GM分析表明，这两种甲虫代表了金龟子亚科中翅膀形态的两个极端。大多数差异发生在翅膀的远端前缘和近端后缘，使这些区域的柔韧性多样化，从而改变了拍打过程中翅膀弹性变形的模式。局部翅膀柔韧性的变化似乎与金龟子向不同食物来源的分化有关，这可能是为了适应不同飞行方式的需求。
