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This is the first book on this subject since JWS Pringle's classic Insect Flight was published in 1957. Much has been written since on applied and ecological aspects of flight, but consideration of the question of the origin of wings and flight has been largely confined to armchair speculation in a scattered literature. To make matters worse, much of the recent empirical work has only appeared in Russian.
The author is a leading Russian authority on insect flight, a pioneer in the use of empirical aerodynamic techniques to unravel mechanisms which underlie insect flight and hence its origins. By uniting fossil, structural, and phylogenetic information with his empirical studies, he draws a coherent, well-substantiated picture of the evolution of insect flight.
Introduction
Part I: Basic principles of insect flight
1. Structure of the wing apparatus
2. Mode of action of the wing apparatus
3. The aerodynamics of insect flight
4. Flight and behaviour
Part II The evolution of insect flight
5. The origins of flight and wings in insects
6. Early forms of flight
7. Flight based in hindwings
8. From functionally four-winged to functionally two-winged flight
9. Progress in insect flight
10. Looking into the past: the process of evolution, and insect wing apparatus
Postscriptum
References
Index
"The general account of flight occupies a third of the book, and will be widely useful [...] but for the anatomy, mechanisms and evolution of insect flight it has no rivals."
– Nature
"The Evolution of Insect Flight has been well worth waiting for. It is a remarkable work, quite outstanding in its scope and breadth of vision [...] what has surprised and delighted me is the magnificent functional treatment of the morphology of the flight system as a whole."
– Trends in Ecology and Evolution
