Collaborative Research: Integrative Phylogenomics of Wing Repurposing, Vestigiality and Loss

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Insects have become the most evolutionarily successful group of animals on Earth due, in part, to wings – their most striking adaptation. Wings provide insects with a myriad of advantages (e.g., in flight, courtship, defense) over their non-winged relatives. Despite this, there are countless examples of insects that have evolved to have lost their wings, or have had them reduced to the point that they are not functional for flight. Cockroaches are a prime example of this, as it appears that they have lost functional wings dozens of times throughout their 250 million year evolutionary history. This research will describe cockroach wing evolution patterns, with the aim of better understanding the value of having wings, losing them, or repurposing them for new functions. In particular, this project will examine modifications of wings in the most specialized subgroup of cockroaches – termites – and their closest cockroach relatives. Achieving these aims teaches us about the processes that shape Earth’s biodiversity, how people might conserve those processes, and how societies can learn from them to better achieve their own aims (e.g., bioinspired design of technology). The project will be carried out in a manner that will bring together international students for collaborative development in the US and abroad. The grant will also fund a mentorship workshop to maximize the benefit to project participants and other members of the local academic community. The workshop will aim to improve mentorship approaches at the pre-professional and professional stage to generate more equitable academic outcomes. This integrated phylogenomic study will assess the macro-evolutionary dynamics of wing-evolution. The research will integrate morphological study of the forewing base, and data on wing presence/absence/vestigiality/mechanical-shedding over a phylogenetic framework that additionally aims to place important rogue lineages. The resulting ancestral state reconstruction will address hypotheses about the evolutionary conservation of mechanical wing-loss, developmental wing-loss, regain, vestigiality, and correlations among these. This product will further allow robust placement of controversial fossils and thus improve divergence date inferences. In all, this study will lend understanding to the evolution of wings, the origins of phenotypes preceding eusociality in termites, and evolutionary patterns among cockroaches. Concurrent to the intellectual component, this grant will fund a mentorship improvement workshop, and other broader impact activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.