Talk:Insect/Archive01

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[edit] 2002

This page should be a little more user-friendly!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaurav (talk • contribs) 17:50, December 21, 2002

[edit] 2003

>> Insects do not breathe <<

They do, according to a research conducted earlier this year: http://www.anl.gov/OPA/news03/news030124.htm --172.177.6.244 13:56, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New link [1] Meggar 01:58, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2004

How are we going to make a page, list of insects, when there are at least 1 million named species...? ugen64 01:07, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

CSIRO entomology is a very good resource for the characterisitcs and life cycle of the insect families--nixie 13:22, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It does not have to be a list of species; I have a book which lists all the families of insects. Other animal lists, such as the list of amphibians, display the classification to subfamily level. Also, a list of species would be very difficult to update. After all, new species of insects (and other arthropods) are constantly being discovered.--Crustaceanguy 13:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

I'd like to see examples of types of insects mentions. For example a few examples of the ocean insects alludes to and such. I read some of those lines and really wanted to know more. I think a few examples would help complete the article further. --Sketchee 02:14, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 2005

Triplehorn and Johnson call hexapoda a class and insecta a taxon (superorder?), including all insects, except for collembola, diplura and protura. What do you think about this? Matthias5 23:59, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Arthropod classification varies a lot from one author to the next, but class Hexapoda usually appears in the context of a subphylum Uniramia, a group that molecular trees have called into question. Is there any compelling reason not to stick with the ranks presently listed? Josh

[edit] Familes redirecting to species...

It seems in my efforts to add individual species, I come across a bunch of examples of cases where a family is a redirect to a common name. I'm trying to figure out if I'm just being a whack job about this, or if others agree it's a bad idea. Examples include : Papilionidae and Blattodea as a few. It seems to me that anything above species should not redirect to a single common name that is a species. The reason this makes it more difficult for me is that if I want to put in a species that is below that, I have to go and destroy the redirect, copy taxoboxes and figure it all out to put in a single species...and when I have several it's frustrating. As an example, Mantodea used to redirect to Praying mantis, so that when I wanted to put in the Chinese mantis I had to break out Mantodea as well as Mantidae (oh, and for the record, I think this needs to be cleaned up). For those of you who actually understand this stuff it might be obvious, but it's a struggle for me every time. (Things I want to put in as examples are some butterflies: siproeta stelenes, dryas julia, heliconius charitonius, and junonia coenia that I have good images of.) I want to make sure I have consensus, and hopefully there can be a consensus about ripping these out. Wikibofh 04:26, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bristletails separate...

I think that Bristletails, silverfish, etc should be in a single group in the taxobox. It was recently broken back out. My source (the Firefly cited in sources) indicates that they are in the Subclass although different orders. It's published in 2002 thus is more recent than the link provided in the breakout. The authors of this section are George C. McGavin, Hopen Entomological Collections at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, UK and Darren Mann of the same place. Without a more authoritative source, my intent is to collapse it back. Comments? Wikibofh 18:48, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Ok I don't get it. They currently are listed as separate orders (Microcoryphia & Thysanura) under the subclass Apterygota. That concurs with your source. Also, what do you propose to merge them into? Microcoryphia as a suborder of Thysanura? The link I used to back up the claim of different orders has a date of 2001. One year is not enough to make the difference there, so it appears there truly is a naming conflict. Is there some more authoritative source that can be called upon? - Taxman Talk 20:01, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Book is in my car. Had to make that last post from a public access. I'll post when I get home them problem...because I don't remember right now.  :) Wikibofh 20:09, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok, here is the deal. I show the Subclass Apterygota with only two orders, Archaeognatha (Bristletails) and Thysanura (Silverfish, Firebrats and others., thus, no separate Microcoryphia. There is also the following comment:
At one time three other orders were included, the proturans, the two-pronged bristletails or Diplura and the springtails or Collembola. However these groups lack the projecting mouth parts that today are taken to characterize insects, and so are now given separate status within the superclass Hexapoda.
There is no mention of Microcoryphia. So, what do we think? Wikibofh 23:48, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
Ok, well adding Mycrocoryphia was a mistake, since it is just another name for the Archaeognatha, and even the website I first found it on had that, I just overlooked it. But even the article Thysanura you put together refers to the Mycrocoryphia as being separated out. Anyway, it seems there is not really much agreement on taxonomy at all as reading from Linnaean taxonomy and our Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. I guess the best that can be done is be flexible and point out where different sources disagree on the taxonomy. - Taxman Talk 18:05, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Great...I saw you pull it out. Thanks for taking a look. I think taxonomic differences are a fundamental problem, not just here but in the scientific world. I think I even read something saying that they don't think DNA is going to sort it out. I think just going with one and noting the differences is our best bet, just like you. Thanks again. Wikibofh 19:20, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Apterygota are a paraphyletic group. Since those are controversial in many circles, I think it would be better to use an alternate system, if we can find one that's reasonably standard. For instance, Systema Naturae lists the following:

I don't really like how many levels it uses, but it has the advantage of matching the phylogeny - see for instance TOL, and I'd recommend we use something similar. ITIS treats the Pterygota as a separate subclass from the Dicondylia, and that used to be listed on this page, but I suspect it's misusing the term Dicondylia. Josh

  • Will you please stop this...you're hurting my head!  :) (I'm kidding). Why is Apterygota paraphyletic? What doesn't it include? I think what we should try to do is come up with some reasonable modern alternative (and what you show might be that...I need to wrap my head around these) and then make sure we document it somewhere. If we decided we like it better, we'll document our old one and swap them out. Thanks for helping out. Wikibofh 13:57, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Well yes, that system agrees between tree of life and Systema Naturae, but I don't know if either is considered especially standard. They both appear to try to stay up to date with peer reviewed literature which sounds good, but I don't know to what extent they actually do. I also don't understand what you mean by Apterygota being paraphyletic. What doesn't it contain that it should? Do you mean the Protura and Diplura, which aren't now considered insects? I see some sources do list those as being in Apterygota. - Taxman Talk 15:12, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

The tree of life is actually fairly conservative, and I think it gives the generally accepted phylogeny, although you can find sources that place the Monura elsewhere. In that case, the Apterygota are paraphyletic because some members (Thysanura) are closer to the Pterygota than they are to the others (Archaeognatha). I don't know what, if any, common system reflects this; if there is none, we might also consider leaving out subclasses for the basal orders, the same way infraclasses are left out for the lower Pterygota. Josh

[edit] But size does matter :)

I think it still applies:

  • " ... North american Feather-winged Beetle Nanosella fungi at 0.25mm is a serious contender for the title of smallest insect in the world... Megaphragma caribea from Guadeloupe, measuring out at a huge 0.17 mm long, is now probably the smallest known insect in the world." [2]
  • "Worlds Smallest Insect..... The "feather-winged" beetles and the "battledore-wing fairy flies" are smaller than some species of protozoa (single cell creatures)." [3]

Wikibofh 20:56, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Cool. Wana write a stub on the thingy and update the article to reflect that information? Assuming that is a reliable source, I don't really know. One I pulled up agreed, but also doesn't seem authoritative. It does however refer to some other extreme insects, such as a 22 inch walking stick specimen! - Taxman Talk 22:04, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok, I'll see what I can stub out...will be a day or two.  :) Wikibofh 22:47, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BugGuide.net

The sole developer and owner of BugGuide.net is no longer able to maintain the website. This site has focused on North American insects and spiders, and contains thousands of photographs, as well as documentation on thousands of species and other taxonomic levels. It occurred to me that Wikipedia might be a good place to save some of that content. There are probably too many photos, and there are licensing issues to photos and content, but maybe it's possible to retain that content somewhere here.

I'm only a casual Wikipedia user and I'm not sure what the consensus is on the biological content of Wikipedia. Are people trying to record insects down to the species level, or is that considered too complex?

--Boone 00:24, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

  • I think it would be fantastic if someone could try to arrange to capture that information. Wikibofh 01:21, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yup, it would be great, and we could use a lot of that content, but licensing would be the big issue. We can't really bend on that, but if you'd like to contact him to see if he would be willing to license what he can under the GFDL for the text and GFDL or suitable creative commons for the images then that would be great. - Taxman Talk 02:56, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • It appears the BugGuide has found a new home for now, so there's no need to rescue the content. I'm going to lobby for a more open license over there, and perhaps we can share some data in the future. Thanks for your feedback. --Boone 17:56, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help with identification

Does anybody know what kind of bug this is? And for bonus points, what kind of flower is this? If you know, please leave a message on my discussion page, because I'll probably forget to check back here.PiccoloNamek 05:49, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Somekinda bug
Somekinda bug
It's probably a kind of wasp. To identify it usually helps to tell where you took it, continent, state, etc. For the plant it can help to tell what habitat it is, such as forest, wetland, grassy field, etc. What I do to figure these out where I live is to go to a library or bookstore and grab a copy of the Audubon Society's field guide to North American insects, and look through those. They have pictures and identification guidelines. If no one happens to answer here, you can try the Science reference desk as some of us identify a lot of bugs there, but the field guide is a pretty good bet. - Taxman Talk 12:03, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
It's a syrphid fly. You'll have to tell me what kind of flower; it's completely unfamiliar to me. Pollinator 05:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
On the hoverfly page, it's down as an "Ocyptamus". - Samsara contrib talk 03:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abdomen problem

This article is one of many bug-related pages that link to Abdomen, which is about human abdomens. We desperately need a page about insect/spider abdomens, with a disambig. I thought one of the people who watch Insect might be willing to write such an article (at least a stub to start). Thanks. Chick Bowen 05:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Query on Harris citation: entomophagy

I would be most grateful for any information regarding the claim, attributed to Marvin Harris, that the taboo against entomophagy is based on the "fact" that larger food-animals require less labor than insects. I doubt that this is true; for the moment I'd love to know where Harris' claim can be found. Slow learner. 4:48p.m. 16 January 2006.

[edit] Bipedal insects

Ever heard about an insect that moves around on just two legs? They don't exactly walk, instead they skate on the water surface using only two legs:

"Marine midges in the Genus Pontomyia are perhaps the only insects that skate on two legs. Unlike most chironomids that are adapted for flying, Pontomia males are skate on the surface of the ocean while searching for females. Their wings are very reduced. Females remain larva-like, have extremely reduced or no legs, and never develop wings. Adult Pontomyia have no functional mouth parts and do not feed. They die shortly after mating or egg-laying and are one of the shortest lived insects known. Larvae feed on detritus and algae. After 4 instars, they pupate and emerge as adults. The adults live only a few hours and do not feed." http://www.unk.edu/acad/biology/hoback/marineinsects/pontomia.htm

Incredible! I always thought there were no marine insects... What an extraordinary thing. Thanks for the link. --IronChris 18:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)



how on earth do i get info on a praying mantice?

Go to praying mantis. RexNL 22:40, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do insects have mucus?

It's a rather silly question but it's been bothering me for a while, after I saw David Firth's "Spoilsbury Toastboy -2." Citizen Premier 00:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

You mean saliva? Yes, at least some do. Diptera, including mosquitoes, have salivary glands. This is how malaria is transmitted. I suspect many other insects will also have them. Some more "basal" creatures have them as well, e.g. ticks. - Samsara contrib talk 19:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good article status

This article was self-nominated for good article status. I think the article is very close, but as the nominator (Samsara) mentioned, there are no footnotes. I'd like to see footnotes or in-line citations before awarding good article status. Lbbzman 03:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Attraction to light

There's a nice picture of flies attracted to light but no explanation - something which would be useful to the article. I'm assuming this helps them find their way out of holes or which way is up, but would like to see a proper scientific explanation. BigBlueFish 16:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time to get some formatting done

The main hindrence at the moment, is the "Classes & Orders" section of the taxobox. With the articles I have worked on, if it was large, it became its own section within the article. At the moment, it forces the images to the left, and looks very bad as there is litle room for the text, and the text is staggered. Texts looks much better if it is always aligned on the left.

Secondly, I think we should do as we did with the frog article, and create a well captioned gallery of quality photos. As insects are obviously more diverse, we wouldn't have much room for repeats. So we should only include images from each "group", e.g. one of a matid, one of a fly etc. It may also be hard to properly identify the insects, so I don't know how we will go with that. What do you all think? --liquidGhoul 07:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The article already features images of the Orthoptera (grasshopper), Diptera (fly), Mantodea (mantis), Hymenoptera (bee) and Lepidoptera (butterfly). I therefore particularly suggest for inclusion in the template:
See what I can find... - Samsara contrib talk 01:52, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Below are some offerings I found. We'll have to crop it down a bit more - several groups are multiply represented, and some groups don't have nice pictures.
I think it will be dull without including the other taxa, so I'll add them as well. - Samsara contrib talk 02:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Adult citrus root weevil (Diaprepes abbreviatus)

A stick insect (Ctenomorpha chronus)

Water strider (Gerris najas)

Bishop's mitre shield bug (Aelia acuminata)

Beautiful Demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo)

Common Earwig (Forficula auricularia)

Cathedral termite mound

A juvenile Patanga japonica

A flower fly, Episyrphus balteatus

Red Mason Bee (Osmia rufa)

Wasp, drinking

Aleiodes indiscretus parasitising a gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) larva

Ant

Scarce swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius)

Giant Leopard Moth (Ecpantheria scribonia)

Rosy Maple Moth (Dryocampa rubicunda)

If we can eliminate one more picture, we can put it in. - Samsara contrib talk 04:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

How about Image:Haft.jpg, it seems very similar to the bug paristising the catarpillar, and is a lot lower quality and less interesting than it. I know there are two moths, but they are both such brilliant photos, I can't see either of them go! --liquidGhoul 04:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

If you cannot identify a species, ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. They can sometimes come up with an answer. --liquidGhoul 11:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Larvae gallery

We should have a separate gallery for larvae! - Samsara contrib talk 02:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

There's plenty of good stuff on Commons, FP1, and FP2; searching for "larva" on Commons gets quite a few hits. - Samsara contrib talk 02:37, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Insects?

Hello everyone. Is there a WikiProject about insects, or at least Arthropods? I couldn't find one in the list of WikiProjects... If there isn't one I think it should be created, and I will assist anyone who would decide to do so, or give it a try myself. Thanks, --IronChris 20:41, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I have created the WikiProject Arthropods. Please visit the Project page and tell me what you think. And of course feel free to join! --IronChris 17:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Viviparous

The page on insects state that some are viviaprous in reproduction. I am not an expert and do not know if this is true, but the link associated viviparous that leads to its definition does not metion insects as vaviparous. It is obvious that one of these pages needs to be edited by either adding insects as an example for viviparous or removing the information stating insects are viviparous.

Insect Homepage Viviparous Homepage

I have made some changes to the vivipary article. There was already mention of aphids being viviparous, but I added some more insects. IronChris | (talk) 13:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do insects feel pain?

I came to this article looking to see if insects feel pain.. If possible, someone please add it.

That's a tough question... certainly they are aware of damage to their body; you can see an insect scurrying away hurridly after it looses a leg or such. But pain may be a complex feeling that requires a more developed mind to experience. As far as I know, insects operate on a combination of stimulus-response and instinct, which would suggest that the sensation of pain would be meaningless to them. I assume that humans feel pain because we are capable of making decisions. If we have to, we can charge through a fire in order to escape a burning building. A roach could do no such thing, because the moment it knew it was damaged it would run in the opposite direction, because it is just operating on instinct.

All of this is just hypothesis, of course. Regardless, I think it's still wrong to squish a bug for no reason. Citizen Premier 04:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what are groups...

what are groups of caterpillars called?

[edit] Pliny quote

The quote from Pliny the Elder seems out of place (and POV, though there isn't a lot of controversy around insects). Anyway, I'm removing it. Mo-Al 22:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I like it actually; it's just a poetic way of saying "There are more insects than there are vertebrates". Eluchil404 00:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two total species of insect?

"Estimates of the total number of current species, including those not yet known to science, range from two to thirty million, with most authorities favoring a figure midway between these extremes." Who seriously suggests there are only two total species of insects? Unless there are objections I'm going to remove that. --Nscheffey(T/C) 21:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Noone, it says a range of two million to thirty million. This is the shorter way of saying that, but it is obviously ambiguous. If you can write it in a way which in unambiguous, that would be good. --liquidGhoul 23:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Wow, now I kind of feel like an idiot. Should have realized that. Well, i think im going to change it to "two million" just to remove the ambiguity. Thanks. --Nscheffey(T/C) 01:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New External Link added

Added Livescience.com's insect page - page contains information from a number of studies, but also has user-submitted insect imagery (ants, butterflies, spiders, etc.) Starexplorer 20:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reproduction

there oughta be a section on insect reprduction. Bandgeek100 15:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Locomotion

Cockroaches are amongst the fastest insect runners and at full speed actually adopt a bipedal run to reach a velocity that, in proportion to their body size. As Cockroaches move extremely rapidly, they need recording at several hundred frames per second to reveal their gait. More sedate locomotion is also studied by scientists in stick insects Phasmatodea.

I think this part of the article needs to be copyedited. I'd do it myself, but I don't understand everything the paragraph seems to be saying. --Kjoonlee 19:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Before reading this talk page I tidied up the sentence. Another editor had removed a statement that if cockroaches were the size of humans they would travel at 200mph, as they considered it unencyclopaedic. This left the sentence with an "orphaned" ending. Britmax 13:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What are they

In the past week or so these large mosquito looking insects have been all over our neiborhood.I would like to know what they are?

We really need a bit more than that to go on, don't you think? Location, appearance, size, or ideally a picture. Large insects that look more or less like mosquitos but are not might be craneflies, mayflies, midges, dixid midges, fungus gnats, dance flies, or wood gnats (Anisopodidae). See this page for pictures. - Nunh-huh 02:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Primary photograph -- honey bee

Why is the headline photo for a topic as major as Insect so terrible? It's low resolution, grainy, terrible color and contrast, and only shows a top-down view of the insect. There are dozens of better photos on this very page, and several excellent honeybee photos in the bee article, if we want to maintain consistency.

Any objections to summarily replacing it with a better photo? Severnjc 22:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Not form me. Be bold! Eluchil404 23:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Duly noted and changed. In the interests of disclosure, I used one of my own photos -- if someone would like to replace it with a better one, that's fine by me. Severnjc 02:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Very nice picture. Actually as I think about it, given the numbver and diversity of insects it actually might make sense to use a montage in the taxbox (cf. Animal). Just a thought for others though, my image editing skills are rather limited. Eluchil404 21:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neural Map

If I wanted to post some info on the brain structure of certain insects (say a honey bee), where would it be most appropriate to do so? should I put it on the main site (honey bee), or should I make a new page for it? Paskari 13:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Helpful Website

Here is an extremely helpful website with information on various living things:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/taxaform.htmlDarkArcher 03:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiquote

We should have a Wikiquote page on insects to go with the quotations section. There are so many out there. One of my favorites is "to a good approximation all species are insects" (Robert May). I don't even have an account there myself, but someone who works on this article might like to. Richard001 03:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Note:I've created such a page (q:Insect), but it needs a lot of work before it will be worth linking to from here. Richard001 (talk) 02:02, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unlikely

Insects (Class Insecta) are a major group of arthropods and the most diverse group of animals on the Earth, with over a million described species—more than double the number of all other living organisms combined.[1]

This is the first sentence of the article, and I consider the numbers to be doubtful. Firstly, the source only seems to take multicellular organisms into account. Secondly, the article on Biodiversity states that estimates of the present global macroscopic species diversity vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of somewhere near 10 million. Even if the figure of two million were correct, the insects would only make up half the species. Burschik (talk) 12:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

"Species" in unicellular organisms are defined using different criteria; if the same criteria were applied to multicellular organisms, the number of "species" would be multipled by several orders of magnitude. Second, that estimate of 2-100 million already assumes that 99% of the taxa are arthropods - in other words, if there are 100 million species on earth, then about 95 million are insects. There are indeed estimates of insect diversity in that range. In fact, all this points out is that someone needs to make that clear in the biodiversity article. Dyanega (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
The numbers still don't add up. The new source referenced claims there are 751.000 thousand insect species, slightly more than half the number of known species (52%), whereas the first sentence of the article claims that the insects account for at least 66% of all species. There seems to be no consensus about the total number of species, and there seems to be no consensus how many of them are insects. Burschik (talk) 10:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
751K is an absurdly low figure (apparently that website uses figures from nearly a decade ago) - most numbers for described insects range between 950K - 1.3M, and even the most conservative of these put insects as comprising over 50% of the total described species. Maybe we should just go with a less ambitious phrasing to accommodate the lower value, and then add a clause regarding the estimated diversity. Dyanega (talk) 21:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The new version should be less controversial. Burschik (talk) 10:37, 12 December 2007 (UTC)