Prehistoric Flight: How it Started With Insects

An international team of experts have released the most comprehensive evolutionary roadmap of insects to date, detailing their "tree of life" in incredible detail and simultaneously showing when and why these little pests actually started to buzz around in the air.

The work was conducted in collaboration with more than 100 international researchers in fields of taxonomy, insect study, and evolution as part of the 1K Insect Transcriptome Evolution project, or 1KITE for short. They determined, for starters, that insects first started showing up on our planet soon after a primordial Earth cooled down and started pumping out life on dry land.

"Insects appeared around 500 million years ago, just as the first land plants and stable terrestrial environments evolved," David Yeates, director of the Australian National Insect Collection, told ABC Science. "And as soon as these early plants started to develop height, which is about 400 million years ago, insects developed wings."

But is it really so simple? Well, sort of...

Despite the fact that insects have long been known as one of the first terrestrial life-forms, they have not been nearly as extensively studied as dinosaurs or birds - groups whose own evolution of flight appears to be one very long and complex story. (Scroll to read on...)