Despite their variety today, all winged insects share a similar body plan, honed over 300 million years of evolution. Each has a thorax in three segments, with a pair of legs on each segment, and a pair of wings on the second and third segment.

Benjamin Prud’homme and colleagues at the National Centre of Scientific Research in Marseille, France, have just found an exception. Despite their spectacular appearance, the “helmets” of treehoppers attach to the first segment of the thorax, in the same way as wings. The team say they are essentially an extra pair of highly modified wing-like appendages.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09977