Newly discovered insect 'Supersonus' hits animal kingdom's highest-pitch love call

Date:

June 5, 2014

Source:

University of Lincoln

Summary:

In the rainforests of South America, scientists have discovered a new genus and three new species of insect with the highest ultrasonic calling songs ever recorded in the animal kingdom. The insects have lost the ability of flight due to their reduced wing size, so the adoption of extreme ultrasonic frequencies might play a role in avoiding predators, such as bats.

Continued

Scientists film inside a flying insect

By Victoria Gill

Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists from the UK and Switzerland have used very intense X-rays to film inside an insect's body as it flies.

The resulting footage - a 3D reconstruction made up of several X-ray snapshots - shows a blowfly's flight motor, the "muscles and hinges" that power flight.

Researchers say the insights could be useful for the design of micro air vehicles.

The results are published in the journal Plos Biology.

Dr Simon Walker from the University of Oxford's animal flight group, first author of the research, explained that the team used very fast, intense X-rays to record the extremely rapid movements. In the time that it takes a human to blink, a blowfly can beat its wings 50 times.

"The X-rays were also focused on to a very small area, which was necessary to achieve high-resolution of such a small object," Dr Walker told BBC News. "The blowfly thorax is about 4mm long."

The scientists tethered the tiny fly to a vertical mount, which they rotated as the insect was X-rayed.

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Insect dating back 1,400 years discovered in Sittingbourne - via Neil Arnold

Volunteers uncovering Sittingbourne’s Saxon past found themselves looking into the eyes of a giant wasp-like creature.

But there was no need to reach for the bug spray - this one was well and truly dead.

The 1,400-year-old, as yet unidentified insect was discovered at CSI: Sittingbourne in The Forum shopping centre, where finds from the Meads cemetery graves are being worked on.

It had been preserved in a corroded belt buckle but it was only when a powerful digital microscope - usually used by engineering companies to find faults in machinery - was brought in for the day that the team could see it in detail.

Conservation manager Dana Goodburn-Brown said: "In 30 years of work I had never seen anything like it.

"The fact that we have an insect preserved is evidence that the Anglo-Saxons in Sittingbourne, about 1,400 years ago, probably laid their dead out for a few days, as part of the burial rites, presumably for friends and family to pay their last respects.

Continued:  http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2012/may/26/insect_dating_back_1%2c00_years.aspx