Why did insects win?

It basically starts from this blog post. The question is: why are Insecta the most diverse group of arthropods, if not of living beings, on Earth's land, while Arachnida and other arthropod groups aren't?

Here I collect some material for further posts on the subject.

Sources

Evolution of Arthropoda

• Marine evolution of Arachnida: "The oldest known scorpions lived around 430 million years ago in the Silurian period, on the bottom of shallow tropical seas.[15] These first scorpions had gills instead of the present forms' book lungs." ( Scorpion )

• Recent evidence for Pancrustacea hypothesis based on nuclear genes phylogenies: Regier et al. 2010

• Rota-Stabelli et al. 2010, mitochondrial genomes from several arthropoda, further Pancrustacea evidence.

• Sea scorpions ( Eurypterida ) gills were in the tail; also no polyramous limbs?

• Euthycarcinoids are a group of primitive arthropods, possibly earliest land dwellers (see Euthycarcinoid ).

Genes in evolution of arthropod body plans

• 1995 landmark paper on crustacean Hox genes vs insect Hox genes, enlightening
• Book that sounds extremly interesting.
• Chelicerate hox
• Review on PNAS on Hox and arthropoda body plan

Evolution of insect flight

• Wings as primitive tracheal gills: Evolution_of_insects#Origin_of_insect_flight
• There is molecular evidence: 1997 Nature, as well as confirming Pancrustacea.
• Recent details of molecular mechanism of evolution
• Apterygote insects still want to fly.

Evolution of metamorphosis

• "The evolution of complete metamorphosis in insects is a key innovation that has led to the successful diversification of holometabolous insects," Suzuki et al. (molecular biology of pupa)

Hypothesis

• The Pancrustacea hypothesis is intriguing because Crustaceans show also considerable diversity. Clades away from Pancrustaceans show less diversity? Measurement of morphological characters?

• gg :

• segmentation difference
• compound vs single eye

Wings problem

• It seems that wings arose from pre-crustacean gills. Arachnida precursors (eurypterids?) had no comparable structure to transform into wings. That's why we don't see flying spiders.

Metamorphosis problem

todo