Re: Glider questions

["Patrick Norton" <ptnorton@email.msn.com>]

dbensen wrote:

> big wings are good for lift and really big wings are better, but small
wings, i.e. the intermediate stage between having no wings at all and having
fully developed wings, have no beneficial effect on aerodynamics at all.
>Snip< and the point at which the extensions became no longer useful as heat
regulators was the same as the point were they started to become useful as
wings.>

There have been posts on this before, so I won't belabor it.  But the
article I think dbenson refers to is Kingsolver and Koehl,
Evolution, 39, 488 (1985).  Based on my notes, this article was also
described in _On the Origin of Insect Wings_Science, Vol. 230. 10/25/85 and
critiqued by S.J. Gould in _Not Necessarily a Wing_ Natural History, 10/85.
Kingsolver's  (et al) work was, I believe, based on earlier work by P.
Whalley in the late 70's. Someone else will have to look up that reference.

I think Kingsolver's work on allometry as a factor in the origin of flight
was extraordinarily insightful and has been overlooked, to say the least, in
the vertebrate paleo world.  But; who am I to say.

Pat