Thesis subject

Development of insect wings

Many insects develop wings during metamorphosis. In this process, the wings develop in a compact volume in a crumpled morphology. In the last stage, the wings unfold from a crumpled compact structure and deploy into a flat rigid wing. This final process takes a few minutes while the development of the wing may take a few days.

The aim of this project is to study the development of crumpled wings of insects in the cocoon, and the dynamics of deployment and expansion of the wings after coming out of the cocoon. We follow the compact structure of the wings in the cocoon by performing X ray tomography, electron microscopy and optical microscopy. The images will be studied by image analysis to unravel the 3D morphological evolution of the structures. We visualize the cross-sections of the structure at different stages including the expansion stage. We use scaling analysis developed for understanding crumpled paper to better understand the dynamic of wing development and expansion.

This study is a collaboration between the Experimental Zoology Group and the Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter Group.