Matt Bertone

Posted 2/1/2012

Last year, a surprising discovery was published in Nature: the highly ornamental "helmet" of treehoppers (Membracidae; seen here) is actually derived from true wings on the prothorax, something no other living insect has. Briefly, insects only ever have wings on the middle part of the thorax (mesothorax) and/or hind part (metathorax); only a few fossil groups developed wing-like appendages on the front third (prothorax) (e.g. members of the extinct order Paleodictyoptera). This was pretty amazing, and based on their evidence (superficially) it seemed like treehoppers escaped the genetic constraint keeping wings from growing on the prothorax and took it to the next level by making crazy headdresses out of the "wings". Their evidence was based on flexible cuticle connecting the "helmet" and some gene expression data that pointed to wing development and attachment. GREAT! But...something wasn't right with their figures. So our group at NCSU, lead by the insect butcher, István Mikó, and including a couple world experts on treehoppers, set to explore this crazy "appendage". Sure enough, what they had assumed was the "true" prothorax, was indeed the mesothorax (see comparison here). After observing the anatomy of many Hemiptera (true bugs) we found two things: 1) the "helmet" was a posterior flattened evagination of the prothorax (including most of the prothorax), and 2) this type of phenomenon is common among Hemiptera (and even other insects). The morphology is difficult to describe, but if you would like to see the evidence marvelously illustrated using all of the latest imaging technologies, here it is:

On Dorsal Prothoracic Appendages in Treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) and the Nature of Morphological Evidence. (2012) István Mikó, Frank Friedrich, Matthew J. Yoder, Heather M. Hines, Lewis L. Deitz, Matthew A. Bertone, Katja C. Seltmann, Matthew S. Wallace, and Andrew R. Deans. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30137. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030137

P.S. - I can't neglect to mention that another paper came out, almost simultaneously, also rejecting the hypothesis of the helmet being wings:

YOSHIZAWA, K. (2012), The treehopper's helmet is not homologous with wings (Hemiptera: Membracidae). Systematic Entomology, 37: 2–6. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3113.2011.00606.x

Posted 3/21/2011

Big news for flies and those who love them: the FLYTREE project just published its biggest paper (one which I am a co-author), outlining the combined results of Tier 1 (14 nuclear genes, full mitochondrial genomes and morphological characters for 42 "backbone" taxa) and Tier 2 (less genetic sampling from 149 of the 152 known fly families). The resulting phylogeny and molecular dating revealed both knowns and surprises. The enigmatic fly family Deuterophlebiidae was found to be sister to all other flies, a result that mirrored my previous findings. More support was found for a paraphyletic lower Diptera (AKA Nematocera), and a monophyletic Brachycera (higher flies) sister to the Bibionomorpha (fungus gnats, love bugs and kin); other traditional higher fly groups were also found to be monophyletic. Surprisingly, the sister groups to Drosophila and other members of the family Drosophilidae are the enigmatic bee lice (Braulidae) and scale insect parasites in the family Cryptochetidae (personally some of the cutest of flies). Another finding, based on molecular dating, showed that flies had three episodes of great diversification: lower Diptera (220 Ma), lower Brachycera (180 Ma), and Schizophora (65 Ma). But don't take my word for it - read more about it:

Episodic radiations in the fly tree of life. (2011) Brian M. Wiegmann, Michelle D. Trautwein, Isaac S. Winkler, Norman B. Barr, Jung-Wook Kim, Christine Lambkin, Matthew A. Bertone, Brian K. Cassel, Keith M. Bayless, Alysha M. Heimberg, Benjamin M. Wheeler, Kevin J. Peterson, Thomas Pape, Bradley J. Sinclair, Jeffrey H. Skevington, Vladimir Blagoderov, Jason Caravas, Sujatha Narayanan Kutty, Urs Schmidt-Ott, Gail E. Kampmeier, F. Christian Thompson, David A. Grimaldi, Andrew T. Beckenbach, Gregory W. Courtney, Markus Friedrich, Rudolf Meier, and David K. Yeates. PNAS: 1012675108v2-201012675.

Posted 1/29/2011

We (HAO Team at NCSU) are happy to announce that our first paper, outlining our ontology, has just come out in PLoS One. The ontology aims to document and logically relate all of the anatomical parts of wasps, bees and ants (Hymenoptera). With an ontology you (or a computer) could reason that if a femur is logically stated as part_of a leg, and you know all of the legs on a wasp are red, then you know that all of the femora also have to be red. There are a lot of uses for this type of information, including discovering how genes affect morphology and intelligently parsing information from species - but I'll let you read more about it:

Yoder MJ, Miko I, Seltmann KC, Bertone MA, Deans AR, 2010 A Gross Anatomy Ontology for Hymenoptera. PLoS ONE 5(12): e15991. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015991

Towne and Country Resort & Hotel, San Diego, CA, Dec 12-15, 2010

Posted 12/20/2010

The annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America has now come and gone, and it was pretty busy for me. I gave a talk about our whole insect drawer imaging using GigaPan technology at ECN and then had another talk during the regular meeting in a session I was moderating. All of that plus two posters, socializing and going to talks has worn me out. But it was great to see everybody and hear about the interesting research being done. I won't highlight anything in particular, so as not to exclude anybody, but in general there were some surprises, laughs and head-shaking (both positive and negative). I also got to eat some good food, and even saw some wildlife in a tourist trap that no tourists want to be shown - tipulid larvae, a cactus fly (Neriidae: Ondontoloxozus longicornis) and some cochineal scales and their fly parasites (Chamaemyiidae). Unfortunately I didn't have my camera...

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, Nov 11-13, 2010

Posted 12/20/2010

Andy Deans and I attended the first Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science to present our project using GigaPan technology to image whole insect musuem drawers. We were also proud to receive one of the top honors, a juried gallery prize for our GigaPan "The Big Four". A larger-than-life print is now hanging in the Carnegie Mellon Natural History Musuem with the seven other winners (see them all here). The meeting was very interesting and some good talks were given by members of NASA, National Geographic and Google, along with many scientists displaying their uses for gigapixel technology/panoramas. Now that we're getting the word out about our project we'll have to wait and see who will visit and utilize our new "virtual museum".
[Photo © Andy Deans]