ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the strange wing folding in rove beetles and shows its interesting properties from the point of view of engineering applications. Compared with other typical beetles, the elytra of most rove beetles are reduced, and the projecting abdomen is exposed and freely movable. At the expense of protection of the abdomen, rove beetles have highly maneuverable bodies that can move rapidly through narrow and curved spaces, extending their habitats to include a wide range of microhabitats, especially the leaf litter layer and the soil. The chapter explores rove beetles use quite a different method for wing actuation from that used in man-made machines. Rove beetles use asymmetric patterns in folding symmetrically shaped structures. The pattern of the wing frame, venation, is an important characteristic for taxonomy and phylogeny and therefore has been investigated. Entomologists have also studied the mechanisms used in wing-folding/wing-unfolding, as well as the crease patterns of the wings, and made many interesting discoveries.
