A nondestructive method of calculating the wing area of insects

• Published in: Ecology and evolution Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. e8792 - n/a
• Main Authors: Yu, Kexin, Reddy, Gadi V. P., Schrader, Julian, Guo, Xuchen, Li, Yirong, Jiao, Yabing, Shi, Peijian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.04.2022; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Body mass; Cicadidae; College campuses; Entomology; Estimates; Estimation; Field tests; Flight; forewings; Goodness of fit; Insects; Leaf area; Leaves; Males; Maneuverability; Mathematical models; Methods; Natural enemies; Nondestructive testing; Plants; proportional relationship; scaling; Species; wing length; Wing loading; wing width; Wings; United States > US; wing width; forewings; proportional relationship; scaling; wing length
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8792

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. Forewing area was found to be proportional to the product of forewing length and width for each of three cicada species, which followed the Montgomery equation. The mixed dataset of the three cicada species also followed the Montgomery equation, which suggests that this equation can apply to the calculation of wing area for other insects with similar wing shapes.