A nondestructive method of calculating the wing area of insects

Abstract

Most insects engage in winged flight. Wing loading, that is, the ratio of body mass to total wing area, has been demonstrated to reflect flight maneuverability. High maneuverability is an important survival trait, allowing insects to escape natural enemies and to compete for mates. In some ecological field experiments, there is a need to calculate the wing area of insects without killing them. However, fast, nondestructive estimation of wing area for insects is not available based on past work. The Montgomery equation (ME), which assumes a proportional relationship between leaf area and the product of leaf length and width, is frequently used to calculate leaf area of plants, in crops with entire linear, lanceolate leaves. Recently, the ME was proved to apply to leaves with more complex shapes from plants that do not have any needle leaves. Given that the wings of insects are similar in shape to broad leaves, we tested the validity of the ME approach in calculating the wing area of insects using three species of cicadas common in eastern China. We compared the actual area of the cicadas’ wings with the estimates provided by six potential models used for wing area calculation, and we found that the ME performed best, based on the trade‐off between model structure and goodness of fit. At the species level, the estimates for the proportionality coefficients of ME for three cicada species were 0.686, 0.693, and 0.715, respectively. There was a significant difference in the proportionality coefficients between any two species. Our method provides a simple and powerful approach for the nondestructive estimation of insect wing area, which is also valuable in quantifying wing morphological features of insects. The present study provides a nondestructive approach to estimating the wing area of insects, allowing them to be used in mark and recapture experiments.

On the wings of dragons: Wing morphometric differences in the sexually dichromatic common whitetail skimmer dragonfly, Plathemis lydia (Odonata: Libellulidae)

“…Mass allocation could explain differences between male and female wing areas relative to body length. High maneuverability allows organisms to evade predation as it is associated with the ability to complete turns with small radii [ 42 , 52 ]. Prey are generally smaller than their predators and this allows prey species to make turns that are quicker and sharper than predators, allowing them to escape predation despite being slow flyers [ 79 ].…”

“…We calculated relative fore and hind wing length by dividing mean fore and hind wing length by body length and calculated relative fore and hind wing area by dividing mean fore and hind wing area by body length. Wing loading is defined as body mass relative to wing length as an indicator of flight efficiency and maneuverability [ 52 ]. While we were unable to collect the dry body mass, we used body length 3 as an estimate of body weight and hence a replacement of body mass to calculate total wing loading.…”

Leaf Area Estimation by Photographing Leaves Sandwiched between Transparent Clear File Folder Sheets

“…Therefore, after photographing the leaves, any automated image analysis software (e.g., Easy Leaf Area [43], LAMINA [86], LeafAnalyser [87], LeafJ [88], Black Spot [89], or pliman [38]) can be combined with this method to estimate the leaf area and Montgomery parameter. Deriving the Montgomery parameter using the clear folder method may also be useful for estimating the wing area of insects, which uses the same length-times-width equation [90]. However, as the present results are based on limited experimental conditions, further studies that include more species are needed before generalizing the applicability of this approach.…”

The Modified Brière Equation and Its Applications

“…where n represents the number of data points. To examine whether the additional parameter in Equation ( 3) was warranted relative to using the simpler Equation ( 2), we used the percentage error of the absolute difference (APE, in %) between the RMSE of the BE sigmoid equation and that of the MBE sigmoid equation [23,24] as follows:…”