A true insect, or member of the class Hexapoda, may be known by the
grouping of its body-segments in three distinct regions--a head, a
thorax and an abdomen--each of which consists of a definite number of
segments. In the terminology proposed by E. R. Lankester the arrangement
is "nomomeristic" and "nomotagmic." The head of an insect carries
usually four pairs of conspicuous appendages--feelers, mandibles and two
pairs of maxillae, so that the presence of four primitive somites is
immediately evident. The compound eyes of insects resemble so closely
the similar organs in Crustaceans that there can hardly be reasonable
doubt of their homology, and the primitively appendicular nature of the
eyes in the latter class suggests that in the Hexapoda also they
represent the appendages of an anterior (protocerebral) segment. Behind
the antennal (or deutocerebral) segment an "intercalary" or
tritocerebral segment has been demonstrated by W. M. Wheeler (1893) and
others in various insect embryos, while in the lowest insect order--the
Aptera--a pair of minute jaws--the maxillulae--in close association with
the tongue are present, as has been shown by H. J. Hansen (1893) and J.
W. Folsom (1900). Distinct vestiges of the maxillulae exist also in the
earwigs and booklice, according to G. Enderlein and C. Borner (1904),
and they are very evident in larval may-flies. The number of
limb-bearing somites in the insectan head is thus seen to be seven. All
of these are to be regarded as primitively post-oral, but in the course
of development the mouth moves back to the mandibular segment, so that
the first three somites--ocular, antennal and intercalary--lie in front
of it. In Lankester's terminology, therefore, the head of an insect is
"triprosthomerous." The maxillae of the hinder pair become more or less
fused together to form a "lower lip" or labium, and the segment of these
appendages is, in some insects, only imperfectly united with the
head-capsule.
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