ИСТИНА

Many of the smallest insects possess bristled wings that superficially resemble bird feathers (see Fig. 1a), in contrast to the more common membranous wings. During the past decade, our understanding of the morphology and function of these bristled wings has significantly improved, see [1] for a review. In particular, it has been shown by an example of a featherwing beetle Paratuposa placentis that bristled wings generate sufficient aerodynamic force while consuming less power and exerting lesser inertial torques, in comparison with similarly sized membranous wings [2]. At the same time, it has been noticed that reconfiguration of the bristles (bending that reduces the aerodynamic drag) is avoided in the biological wings [3], which means that the minimization of wing mass is constrained by structural stiffness requirements. In this work, we find optimal values of the morphological parameters that minimize the wing mass under the constraints of ensuring sufficient bending stiffness to avoid reconfiguration and producing large enough aerodynamic force to keep the insect aloft. Concomitantly, we measured the morphological parameters of wings on a number of featherwing and membranous-wing beetle species to verify the model.