Strong attachment as an adaptation of flightless weevils on windy oceanic islands

Enhanced attachment ability is common in plants on islands to avoid potential fatal passive dispersal. However, whether island insects also have increased attachment ability remains unclear. Here we measured the attachment of a flightless weevil, Pachyrhynchus sarcitis kotoensis, from tropical islands, and compared it with documented arthropods from the mainland. We examined the morphology and material gradient of its attachment devices to identify the specific adaptive modifications for attachment. We find that the weevil has much stronger attachment force and higher safety factor than previously studied arthropods, regardless of body size and substrate roughness. This probably results from the specific flexible bases of the adhesive setae on the third footpad of the legs. This softer material on the setal base has not been reported hitherto and we suggest that it acts as a flexible hinge to form intimate contact to substrate more effectively. By contrast, no morphological difference i..., , , # Data from: Strong attachment as an adaptation of flightless weevil on windy oceanic island

The dataset belongs to Lu-Yi Wang1,2*, Chung-Ping Lin3*, Stanislav N. Gorb2*, Hamed Rajabi1,4*

1 School of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
2 Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Institute of Zoology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
3 Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan
4 Division of Mechanical Engineering and Design, School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, UK

*Corresponding author: Lu-Yi Wang ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]), [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])), Chung-Ping Lin ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])), Stanislav N. Gorb ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])), Hamed Rajabi ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]))

This dataset includes 5 different components...