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AERODYNAMICSFlying Tiny
A speck-sized beetle turns flight
mechanics upside downWhen it comes to insect flight, bigger is
usually better. As wings shrink, air friction
overwhelms flight power—that’s why
dragonflies soar as houseflies sputter. But
a beetle the size of a grain of sand flips this
maxim on its head.
The featherwing beetle ( Paratuposa pla-
centis ), less than half a millimeter long, is
smaller than some single-celled amoebas.
At this scale air becomes syrupy, and sci-
entists once believed the beetles simply
drifted wherever the wind blew them. But
new research in Nature shows how they
wield lightweight wings to keep pace with
species three times their size.
As the name suggests, featherwing
beetles sport bristled, featherlike wings.
These porous appendages are light and
produce less friction than the typical mem-
brane-based wings that flies have, helping
the beetle generate lift. Multiple insect lin-
eages, including parasitic wasps, have
evolved similar wings as they downsized—
but these beetles use a previously un -
known strategy to generate their outsized
flight prowess, according to the new
study’s authors.
In 2017 the research team collected
featherwing beetles from bits of fungi in
a Vietnam jungle. To record the insects’
infinitesimal flight patterns, experimenters
placed the creatures in a transparent cham-
From “ber and filmed them with two high-speedNovel Flight Style and Light Wings Boost Flight Performance of Tiny Beetles,” by Sergey E. Farisenkov et al., inNature,Vol. 602; February 3, 2022