Adaptation to extreme environments

Question 1

What are Palaeodictyopterida?

Answer 1

Extinct beaked insects that were the first insects to feed extensively on plants.

Question 2

What are Griffenflies (Protodonata)?

Answer 2

The largest insect to have ever lived 280 million years ago.

Question 3

How many insect species have been recorded?

Answer 3

925,000 species.

Question 4

What are the major features of the insect fossil record?

Answer 4

All major orders in place since Jurassic period.

All current insect families have been around for at least 100 million years.

Only one major clade has gone extinct.

Individual species last a long time: 3-10 million years. Record 45 MY.

Only one major extinction at end of Permian.

Thought that insects evolved alongside angiosperms.

Question 5

Describe the respiratory system of an insect.

Answer 5

High concentration of oxygen in the tracheole diffusion moves it into the tissue. Likewise, the high concentration of carbon dioxide in the tissue moves it outward through the tracheole.

Question 6

What is the trachea of an insect made of and what other part of an insect is made up of this material?

Answer 6

Trachea is made up of chitin rings and the exoskeleton is also made up of this.

Question 7

Who discovered the respiratory function of air stores carried by some aquatic insects.

Answer 7

William Henry and Richard Ege

Question 8

How many species of parasitoids are there and what percentage of insects do they cover?

Answer 8

87,000 species and this covers 10% of all insect species.

Question 9

What is a parasitoid?

Answer 9

An insect whose larva feeds in or on another arthropod eventually killing it.
They are halfway between a parasite and predator.

Question 10

Why are parasitoids and hosts in a coevolutionary arms race?

Answer 10

Because they have the same taxonomic class, similar size and generation times.

Question 11

What do parasitoids use to insert their larvae?

Answer 11

Ovipositors.

Question 12

What is the difference between a parasitoid and a hyperparasitoid?

Answer 12

Parasitoids feed exclusively on/in the body of another arthropod.
Hyperparasitoid feeds on/in the body of another parasitoid.

Question 13

What are superparasites?

Answer 13

A selection of 1st instar Hymenoptera parasitoid larvae with fighting mandibles.

Question 14

What are the three orders that parasitoids are split into?

Answer 14

Hymenoptera, Dipteria and Coleoptera.

Question 15

In the suborder Apocrita for Hymenoptera, what are the two super families?

Answer 15

Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonoidea.

Question 16

For the order Diptera what are the three families it is split into?

Answer 16

Phoridae,

Question 17

How could you train a parasitoid wasp?

Answer 17

Train the wasp to associate food with vanilla and the host with chocolate. So when the wasp is hungry it will fly to the vanilla and to the chocolate when well fed.