Treehoppers produce highly diverse structures called helmets. To do so they seem to have exploited the genetic potential, long inhibited in other winged insects, to develop wings on a particular anatomical segment. See Letter p.83
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Moczek, A. The origins of novelty. Nature 473, 34–35 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/473034a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/473034a
Xiao Yi
The research raises a big question to developmental biology and evolutionary biology. I totally agree with their experimental results but not convinced by the argument at the end that the peculiarity of treehopper argues for selection and against developmental constraint. Just finding the correlation between the regulation pattern of some genes with appendage formation does not necessarily mean cause-and-effect relationship. Further experiments to figure out the detailed molecular mechanisms (if possible) is needed to test the hypothesis about developmental constraint. Also, in order to argue for selection, ecological and/or behavioral experiments on treehoppers are needed to evaluate the selective advantage the extra appendage can conffer.