An ancient Fox gene cluster in bilaterian animals

Conclusions The important message that emerges from a consideration of insect flight is that the peculiar specializations that make flight possible make much more sense when viewed within the context of the system as a whole. Simple scaling laws and the loss of aerodynamic performance at low Reynolds numbers require that small insects flap at high frequency, a physical constraint that drove the evolution of a mechanically gated flight muscle. This, in turn, required the development of a separate steering motor system, which operates using a phase code, thus constraining the final protocol that descending sensory commands must use to guide the animal through its environment. This organization offers us insight into how a complex biological organism works as an intact system. Fortunately, many challenging problems remain, otherwise engineers and toy makers would have already littered the world with tiny mechanical flies.