Origins of insects and flying

This video from the USA is called Evolution – Part 2 of 7 – Great Transformations (PBS Documentary).

From Wildlife Extra:

Insects were first to fly

Insects were the first type of living creature to develop wings and learn to fly, new research shows.

“Our research shows that insects originated at the same time as the earliest land-based plants, about 480 million years ago,” Director of CSIRO‘s Australian National Insect Collection and one of the authors on the paper David Yeates said.

“Then, about 400 million years ago, ancient ancestors of today’s dragonflies and mayflies were the first to develop wings – giving them the ability to fly long before any other animal could do so.

“This was at about the same time that land-based plants developed height, showing they were able to rapidly adapt to their changing environment.

The findings also confirm that while biodiversity crises led to mass extinction events in many other groups, such as dinosaurs, insects continued to survive and diversify by quickly adapting to new situations and opportunities that arose.

Lead researcher for the study, Professor Bernhard Misof from the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany, said that insects were the most species rich organisms on Earth.

“They are of immense ecological, economic and medical importance and affect our daily lives, from pollinating our crops to vectoring diseases,” Professor Misof said.

“We can only start to understand the enormous species richness and ecological importance of insects with a reliable reconstruction of how they are related.”