Insect Flight, Vision, and Locomotion

Niche

The role of an organism in an ecosystem.

Direct flight muscles

Muscles that attach directly to wings and are contracted to achieve flight

Indirect flight muscles

Major flight muscles attached to the walls of the thorax rather than the bases of the wings, which cause the shape of the thorax to change when contracted, indirectly causing the wings to move.

Asynchronous muscle

Insect muscle which contracts multiple times due to a single nerve impulse.

Compound eyes

Main organ for vision, which consists of many ommatidia. The more ommatidia, the better the insect's sight.

Ommatidia

The facets of the compound eye of insects.

Ocelli

Simple eyes on an insect used to sense light, located on top of head.

Stemmata

Simple eyes used for vision by immatures, located on the side of head.

flicker fusion frequency

Rate at which images and movement can be processed by the brain. The higher the frequency, the faster an organism processes movement and thus the faster it can react to movement.

Furcula

A fork-shaped appendage of Collembola, which allows the animal to jump a considerable distance.

Resilin

A highly elastic protein, found only in insects and some crustaceans, that is able to release almost as much energy as it can store, losing very little in the conversion process.

Migration

Long-distance and often cyclical movement of an animal group from one region to another.