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Insect Sensory System

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Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior

Introduction

Insects are the richest organisms on earth in terms of species, biomass, and distribution (Goulson 2019). Such richness is highly associated with morphological, ecological, and behavioral diversity, along with lineages diversifications that have been driven by coevolution with angiosperms (Hunt et al. 2007), which make insects the main pollinators and great dispersers. To play that role, along with many others, insects evolved simple, connected sensory organs, which receive and filter the information around and process it differently according to the context. These organs are involved in the insects’ evolutionary success and promote a perception of the environment through their stiff exoskeleton. As such, and due to their thick physical barrier, insects rely upon a range of mechano- and chemosensory structures, both spread throughout the major axis of their body.

The insect’s sensory systems have been extensively investigated, mainly from model organisms, such as Drosophila...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciências e Engenharia de Biossistemas (DCEB), Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paula M. Souto

  2. Museu Nacional, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Paula M. Souto

  3. Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food (LEAF), Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paula M. Souto

  4. Laboratório de Entomologia, Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    André Fonseca Antunes

  5. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Evolutiva e do Desenvolvimento (BED), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Viviane C. S. Nunes

  6. Computational Biology and Population Genomics Group (COBIG2), Centro de Biologia Ambiental, Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Viviane C. S. Nunes

Authors
  1. Paula M. Souto
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  2. André Fonseca Antunes
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  3. Viviane C. S. Nunes
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Jennifer Vonk

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Missouri Southern State University, Joplin, MO, USA

    Joseph Boomer

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Souto, P.M., Antunes, A.F., Nunes, V.C.S. (2022). Insect Sensory System. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_1138

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