Other Insects

This group gathers Insects subcategory members belonging to a genuine insect order too narrowly represented within this subcategory to justify its own heading here, several of them ancient, small, or ecologically obscure lineages. It spans the mayflies, whose short-lived winged adults are unique among insects for molting one additional time after gaining functional wings, the stoneflies, aquatic-nymph insects sensitive enough to water quality to serve as a living pollution indicator, the caddisflies, whose aquatic larvae build protective cases from silk and found debris, the earwigs, recognized by the pincer-like cerci at the tip of the abdomen, the silverfish and bristletails, primitive wingless insects that diverged from the winged insects extremely early, the stick insects, masters of camouflage that resemble twigs or leaves, the ice crawlers and gladiators, small cold- or cave-adapted orders each discovered relatively recently, the webspinners, which build silk tunnels from glands on their front legs, and the twisted-wing parasites, whose males alone are free-living and whose females spend their entire adult life inside a host insect's body.