Of Halteres and Pointells. Triangle Hoverfly, Melanostoma mellinum, on Asparagus officinalis, Asparagus, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I've posted photos of Asparagus flowers - Asparagus officinalis -
and Triangle Hoverfly - Melanostoma mellinum - here before and even of Marmalade Hoverfly - Episyrphus balteatus - feeding on Asparagus pollen. But this time my subject is neither the pretty, petite flower nor the tongueing insect. Olymp expertly focused on that little green globe just under Insect's forewing.
That small, wonderfully green appendage - there's one on either side of Hoverfly - is called a haltere (plural: halteres). Entomologists are today not yet entirely sure of their working except to say that they intricately play an important part in stabilising Fly flight.
The first naturalist to draw attention to these halteres was one William Derham (1657-1735). Derham was an English clergyman, naturalist and scientist, and he sought to combine all of that in an as-it-were cosmological theology, in which the Book of Nature played as important a part as the Book of Revelation in the demonstration of a Creator. He writes about halteres in his Physico-theology: or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation, being the Substance of Sixteen Sermons delivered in 1711-1712, p. 316. There he waxes precisely eloquent on his observation of what he calls 'poises' or 'pointells', without which - yes! he experimented insecto-surgically - diptera such as hoverflies can't fly. Obviously for him this, too, demonstrates the God of Nature's precise engineering.
Of Halteres and Pointells. Triangle Hoverfly, Melanostoma mellinum, on Asparagus officinalis, Asparagus, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I've posted photos of Asparagus flowers - Asparagus officinalis -
and Triangle Hoverfly - Melanostoma mellinum - here before and even of Marmalade Hoverfly - Episyrphus balteatus - feeding on Asparagus pollen. But this time my subject is neither the pretty, petite flower nor the tongueing insect. Olymp expertly focused on that little green globe just under Insect's forewing.
That small, wonderfully green appendage - there's one on either side of Hoverfly - is called a haltere (plural: halteres). Entomologists are today not yet entirely sure of their working except to say that they intricately play an important part in stabilising Fly flight.
The first naturalist to draw attention to these halteres was one William Derham (1657-1735). Derham was an English clergyman, naturalist and scientist, and he sought to combine all of that in an as-it-were cosmological theology, in which the Book of Nature played as important a part as the Book of Revelation in the demonstration of a Creator. He writes about halteres in his Physico-theology: or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation, being the Substance of Sixteen Sermons delivered in 1711-1712, p. 316. There he waxes precisely eloquent on his observation of what he calls 'poises' or 'pointells', without which - yes! he experimented insecto-surgically - diptera such as hoverflies can't fly. Obviously for him this, too, demonstrates the God of Nature's precise engineering.