Free Republic

SRC="/img/shim.gif"> Wings could be a passing phase for the giant prickly stick insect (Image: OSF) Researchers have discovered that on a number of occasions in the past 300 million years, stick insects have lost their wings, then re-evolved them. Entomologists have described the revelation as "revolutionary". Michael Whiting, an evolutionary biologist from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and his team stumbled upon the finding while examining the DNA of 37 different phasmids, the stick and leaf insects famous for camouflaging themselves against plants, in a bid to work out their family tree.   The big wing switch Entomologists have...