sciencenewsforstudents:

An adult insect wing is basically dead. Most of it is dried up, like a dead leaf. Only a little bit — the skinny dark lines called veins — have living, breathing parts inside. Or so Rhainer Guillermo Ferreira thought. So what were those little pipes that looked like breathing tubes doing in the dried parts of dragonfly wings?

Guillermo Ferreira was stunned. The pipes looked like tracheal tubes. They are what carry oxygen to living tissues in insects. So why would tissue that was supposed to be dead need to breathe? That’s what this insect biologist — or entomologist — working at Kiel University in Germany was curious to know.

So he asked another insect biologist to take a look. This colleague, too, was “shocked.” They now brought in yet a third entomologist. Still, there was shock all around.

The shimmering blue wings of male Zenithoptera (Zeh-neh-THOP-tur-uh) dragonflies might be unexpectedly alive, Guillermo Ferreira now suspects.