Insects are one of the most mysterious, ancient and numerous inhabitants of our planet. Until now, scientists are discovering their new types, each of which has its own characteristics in the structure and life. But with all the variety of insects, like all living things, the need for food invariably unites.
Insects feed on plant and animal food, rotting and decaying organic matter, as well as the waste products of organisms. At the same time, each individual species demonstrates food specialization, which allows maintaining a balance in nature. In the process of evolution, insects have formed four main types of oral apparatus, depending on the nature of their nutrition and biological characteristics. Oral apparatus are sucking, gnawing, piercing-sucking and licking-gnawing.
Feeding insects with a gnawing mouth apparatus
The gnawing mouth apparatus is inherent in insects that feed on solid food: beetles, ants, locusts, cockroaches, grasshoppers, caterpillars and others. When viewed under a microscope, they show a well-developed upper and lower lip, as well as a pair of upper and lower jaws. This allows them to easily cope with blades of grass, leaves, crops, seeds, fruits and even tree bark. The latter is eaten by many species of beetles and termites, because it is rich in nutrients and fiber.
Wood is the hardest food for insects. To extract food from it, they have to pass a mass of sawdust through their intestines.
Feeding insects with a sucking mouth apparatus
Butterflies are prominent representatives of insects with a sucking apparatus. To feast on the sweet nectar of a flower, they just need to lower their long and thin proboscis inside it. In evolutionary terms, the proboscis is nothing more than elongated jaws, fused at the edges. In the normal state, the proboscis of butterflies is folded into a tight spring. Such a mouth apparatus is also characteristic of most species of flies and some beetles.
The length of the proboscis in butterflies is very different. The Madagascar Macrosila predicta, for example, has a proboscis exceeding 25 cm.
Feeding insects with piercing-sucking and licking-gnawing mouthpieces
A piercing-sucking mouth can be seen in mosquitoes, some flies, wasps, bedbugs and many other types of insects. With the help of such a device, they pierce the skin of plants or living creatures and feed on their sap or blood. A horsefly, for example, has a whole set of piercing objects in its mouth, because in order to get to the blood of an animal, it needs to pierce its thick skin.
The lice-gnawing mouth apparatus allows the insect to gnaw solid food with the upper jaws and at the same time suck in liquid food using the proboscis formed by the lower jaw and lip. Vivid representatives of insects with such a mouth are bees, which not only lick honey and pollen, but also knead wax.
