Non-sexual abdominal appendages in adult insects challenge a 300 million year old bauplan

SummaryDespite their enormous diversity, the bauplan of adult winged insects (pterygotes) is remarkably conservative since the Lower Devonian: a five-segmented head, a three-segmented thorax with three pairs of walking legs and an eleven-segmented abdomen without any non-sexual appendages [1,2]. The only known exceptions are the abdominal appendages of adult male sepsid flies on the fourth segment; however, these are also used as copulatory organs and are supposedly maintained through sexual selection [3]. Here, we report a rod-like paired appendage from the third and fourth abdominal segments in adults of the Southeast-Asian Hemiptera taxon Bennini (Figure 1A,B; Supplemental information). These are fully musculated, innervated, and movable and bear highly organized sensory and secretory units. The appendages, termed LASSO (lateral abdominal sensory and secretory organs), are consistent in topology and structure in all species studied and not sexually dimorphic. The existence of these non-sexual abdominal appendages reveals the potential of the 300 million year old conserved bauplan of insects