The world of insects is largely unknown. With some 1.3 million species listed by their care, and 10,000 new described each year, entomologists can rightly affirm that they do not do. Yet, according to the selected assessments, the reality would be 10 or 100 times more important. As for the biomass of insects, it would be four times higher than that of all vertebrates, 300 times that of humans. Suffice to say that on the subject, the discoveries are not lacking.
Nevertheless: That an international team, driven from the University of Lomonossov of Moscow, has published in the journal Nature, this January 19 , appears quite exceptional. It has just discovered that the smallest insects in the world, beetles of less than half a millimeter gathered in the group of Ptiliidae, practiced a quite unique flight, that the team simply summarizes: “They rake in The air. “More surprising again,” This flight allows them to achieve an exceptional speed, “says Alexey Polilov, director of the Lomonossov University entomology laboratory. “If it reports it to the size of their body, they surpass all the animals for which this parameter has been measured,” he says.
The team had already published in recent years several articles detailing the biology, anatomy and performance of Paratosa Placentis, a steering wheel bolid of less than 0.4 millimeters, the model species of the group. But they had not yet filmed in detail and analyzed the theft of these tiny beetles, great as an amoeba. Nor modeled their movements and the flow of air around their wings. “This time, we have all the story, and it is really beautiful,” greeted Jérôme Casas, professor of ecology at the University of Tours and specialist insects.
Wings covered with bristles / H2>
The first chapter has, in fact, was written in the nineteenth century, when entomologists have discovered that some insects pretending from the world of liliputiane had the particularity of having wings not covered a membrane but bristles. The decades passing, researchers have understood the reason. “Below the millimeter, they move in the air as in a viscous fluid”, summarizes Jerome Casas. The air “glue” thus hair. As the hands of a swimmer does not closing his fingers, the comb-shaped wings therefore retain certain efficiency, while taking advantage of a weight much lower than that would impose a membrane.
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