Key Vocabulary
Antennae: a sensory organ in insects involved in an insect's ability to smell its food.
Abdomen: the last section of the insect's body and the place where digestion and reproduction take place.
Compound Eye: An eye made up off many hexagonal shaped lenses.
Cuticle: the hard exoskeleton made up of dense protein layers.
Diptera: house flies belong to the order of Diptera
Haemolymph: a liquid that transports nutrients and waste in insects and is analogous to blood in humans.
Head: the head contains the compound eyes, mouthparts, and the ocelli.
Labrum: an insect's upper lip.
Labium: an insect's lower lip. Contains a pair of palps.
Larvae (plural of larva): the second stage of the fly's life cycle. They are wormlike and have mandibles to eat. Synonym: maggots.
Mandibles: first set of jaws in dragonflies that move laterally.
Maxillae: second set of jaws in dragonflies that move laterally and contain palps.
Nymph: second stage (after eggs) of the dragonfly's lifecycle.
Ocelli: part of an insect's sensory organs that detects light. Both the fly and dragonfly have three arranged in a triangular shape.
Odonata: dragonflies belong to the order of Odonata.
Ommatidia: individual hexagonal shaped lenses present in the compound eye.
Palps: a pair of sensory organs in insects involved in taste. See Figure 4.
Proboscis: the fly's mouthpart that has tubes that carry the saliva to food to liquefy it before sucking it back up. See Figure 5.
Thorax: the middle section of insects that houses the flight muscles, legs, and wings.
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