While usually more or less sensorial in function, Graber states that the longicorn beetles in walking along a slender twig use their antennæ as a rope-dancer does his balancing pole.
Fig. 45.—Antenna of Talarocera nigripennis, ♂.—After Williston.
Recent examination of the sense-organs in the antennæ of an ant, wasp, or bee enables us, he says, to realize what wonderful organs the antennæ are. In such insects we have a rod-like tube which can be folded up or extended out into space, containing the antennal nerve, which arises directly from the brain and sends a branch to each of the thousands of olfactory pits or pegs which stud its surface. The antenna is thus a wonderfully complex organ, and the insect must be far more sensitive to movements of the air, to odors, wave-sounds, and light-waves, than any of the vertebrate animals.
That ants appear to communicate with each other, apparently talking with their antennæ, shows the highly sensitive nature of these appendages. “The honey-bee when constructing its cells ascertains their proper direction and size by means of the extremities of these organs.” (Newport.)
How dependent insects are upon their antennæ is seen when we cut them off. The insect is at once seriously affected, its central nervous system receiving a great shock, while it gives no such sign of distress and loss of mental power when we remove the palpi or legs. On depriving a bee of its antennæ, it falls helpless and partially paralyzed to the earth, is unable at first to walk, but on partly recovering the use of its limbs, it still has lost the power of coördinating its movements, nor can it sting; in a few minutes, however, it becomes able to feebly walk a few steps, but it remains over an hour nearly motionless. Other insects after similar treatment are not so deeply affected, though bees, wasps, ants, moths, certain beetles, and dragon-flies are at first more or less stunned and confused.
The antennæ afford salient secondary sexual differences, as seen in the broadly pectinated antennæ of male bombycine moths, certain saw-flies (Lophyrus), and many other insects.
The mouth-parts, buccal appendages, or trophi, comprise, besides the labrum, the mandibles and maxillæ.
The mandibles.—These are true jaws, adapted for cutting, tearing, or crushing the food, or for defence, while in the bees they are used as tools for modelling in wax, and in Cetonia, etc., as a brush for collecting pollen. They are usually opposed to each other at the tips, but in many carnivorous forms their tips cross each other like shears. They are situated below the clypeus on each side, and are hinged to the head by a true ginglymus articulation, consisting of two condyles or tubercles to which muscles are attached, the principal ones being the flexor and great extensor (Fig. 48). They are solid, chitinous, of varied shapes, and in the form of the teeth those of the same pair differ somewhat from each other (Fig. 46 A). In the pollen-eating beetles (Cetoniæ) and in the dung-beetles (Aphodius, etc.) the edge is soft and flexible. In the males of Lucanus, etc. (Fig. 47), and of Corydalus (Fig. 29), they are of colossal size, and are large and sabre-shaped in the larvæ of water-beetles, ant-lions, Chrysopa, etc. where they are perforated at the tips, through which the blood of their prey is sucked.
While the mandibles are generally regarded as composed of a single piece, in Campodea and Machilis there appears to be an additional basal piece apparently corresponding to the stipes of the first maxilla, and separated by a faint suture from the molar or distal joint. In Campodea there is a minute movable appendage figured both by Meinert and by Nassonow, which appears to represent the lacinia of the maxilla (Fig. 48). Wood-Mason has observed in the mandibles of the embryo of a Javanese cockroach, Blatta (Panesthia) javanica, indications of “the same number of joints as in that of chilognathous myriopods, or one less than in that of Machilis.” Also he adds: “In both ‘larvæ’ and adults of Panesthia javanica a faint groove crosses the ‘back’ of the mandible at the base. This groove appears to be the remains of the joint between the third and apical segments of the formerly 4–segmented mandibles.”