Biomechanics of biting in dragonflies, mayflies and silverfish - gaining insights into the structural basis of insect head evolution

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Insects account for nearly two thirds of all animal life on earth. The earliest insect lineages (which include dragonflies, mayflies, and silverfish) appeared over 400 million years ago. Insects are intensively studied due to their roles as pollinators of plants or as disease carriers. However, insects are poorly understood from a biomechanical point of view. Their body-plan, for example the head system, shows a remarkable morphological diversity and the precise biomechanical properties of the different head systems are unclear. Very little is known on how the subparts of the head work together and how the remarkable biting abilities of insects are realised.This project will use the latest imaging and engineering modelling techniques to develop the first computational models of insect heads that will predict muscle activity and strain through the head during biting, and thereby reveal unique information on their biomechanics.The arguments used for reasoning the relationships and evolution of dragonflies, mayflies and silverfish are based mainly on head structures. However, since the biomechanical characteristics and relationships of the subparts of the head and mouthparts are unclear, it is conceivable that our current picture of their evolution is wrong. Similarities in the head morphology may simply be caused by similar mechanical requirements rather than real common ancestry of the lineages. Thus, the goals of this project are: (i) to understand the insect head from a biomechanical point of view, with a focus on the influence of head form, specific geometric details, type of mandible articulation and musculature; (ii) to reveal information on the functional dependence of head features to each other in order to clarify theories about insect head evolution.