Insect Wings: Structure, Function, Development, Evolution, and Diversity

Dear Colleagues,

Insects are considered the most biodiverse group of organisms on this planet. The key evolutionary steps leading to this biodiversity are likely the wing development stage and the pupal stage. Insect wings are so important that insect wing characteristics can often indicate insect orders, as seen in representative insect orders such as Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Hemiptera. The early evolutionary emergence of primitive wings for flight likely introduced diverse possibilities for developing novel flight patterns. In addition to the original flight function of wings, insect wings have multiple physiological functions, including temperature regulation, physical protection, and visual signaling, and exhibit diverse sizes, shapes, color patterns, and other structural traits. Functional wing diversity may thus be considered one of the core features of insect diversity. Owing to the Drosophila wing system, some important mechanisms of wing development in terms of gene expression have been discovered, but this knowledge from Drosophila may not be completely applicable to other insect wing systems. Moreover, the association between gene expression and functional wing morphogenesis still remains largely unclear.

This Special Issue of Insects welcomes submissions of research and review articles on insect wings. We encourage studies on wing structure, function, development, evolution, and diversity, using molecular techniques, bioimaging, behavioral analyses, bioinformatics, and computer simulations, but other studies on any aspect of insect wings will also be considered for publication in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Joji M. Otaki
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Insects is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.