Insects are found around the world, and an international group of over 100 scientists have recently uncovered the evolutionary origins of the tiny animals.
Biologists have identified more than 1,659 species of animals, about 80 percent of which are insects, scientifically known as arthropods.
Humans are rulers of the planet in many respects, but in terms of sheer numbers, insects are kings and queens of Earth. However, insect fossils are relatively rare, since conditions that lead to fossilization usually result in crushing the tiny creatures.
"The biodiversity of insects is huge - they are the largest species group on the planet. Whatever people do, insects did it first. They waged war, they took slaves, they learned to work cooperatively, they flew, they farmed," Jessica Ware, a biologist at Rutgers University-Newark, and one of the researchers participating in the study, said.
Hexapoda, ancestors of insects, were found to be 490 million years old, while true insects first flew 406 million years before our time. This was during the age when terrestrial plants first diversified and grew into forests, long before the age of the dinosaurs. They were the first animals to develop the ability to fly.
The 1,000 Insect Transcriptome Evolution (1Kite) study, involving researchers from 10 nations, mapped genomes of 1,200 species from across the class of insects. However, just 144 of these were featured in the journal article announcing the results of the study.
"Insects are one of the most species-rich groups of metazoan organisms. They play a pivotal role in most non-marine ecosystems and many insect species are of enormous economical and medical importance. Unraveling the evolution of insects is essential for understanding how life in terrestrial and limnic environments evolved," 1Kite researchers wrote on the project Web site.
Supercomputers were set to analyze the huge amount of data collected by scientists and compare that information to what is known of the fossil record. The evolution of new technologies and lower costs for computing equipment made it possible to carry out massive amounts of genetic sequencing quickly for the first time.
"With these comprehensive dating analyses, we are now able to say when flight, herbivory, and parasitism evolved, and much more. Ancestors of modern winged insects such as dragonflies were the first flying organisms, and we can say how old they are - it's hundreds of millions of years - thanks to the dating work I led," Ware told the press.
Additional papers will likely be produced in the future, as researchers examine the large amount of data collected in the study.
Study of the evolutionary origin of insects was detailed in the journal Science.
