page_title: Insect mouthparts
section_title: Mandible
hierarchical_section_title: Insect mouthparts / Chewing insects / Mandible
caption_attribution_description: English: Focus stacked image of European Honeybee (Apis mellifera) mouthparts, showing labium and maxillae. These mouthparts perform the 'lapping' of liquid food, and are similar to the mouthparts in other bees, ants and their relatives.
context_page_description: Insects have a range of mouthparts, adapted to particular modes of feeding. The earliest insects had chewing mouthparts. Specialization has mostly been for piercing and sucking, although a range of specializations exist, as these modes of feeding have evolved a number of times
context_section_description: A chewing insect has a pair of mandibles, one on each side of the head. The mandibles are caudal to the labrum and anterior to the maxillae. Typically the mandibles are the largest and most robust mouthparts of a chewing insect, and it uses them to masticate (cut, tear, crush, chew) food items. Two sets of muscles move the mandibles in the coronal plane: abductor muscles move insects' mandibles apart (laterally); adductor muscles bring them together (medially). This they do mainly in opening and closing their jaws in feeding, but also in using the mandibles as tools, or possibly in fighting; note however, that this refers to the coronal plane of the mouth, not necessarily of the insect's body, because insects' heads differ greatly in their orientation.
  In carnivorous chewing insects, the mandibles commonly are particularly serrated and knife-like, and often with piercing points. In herbivorous chewing insects mandibles tend to be broader and flatter on their opposing faces, as for example in caterpillars.
  In males of some species, such as of Lucanidae and some Cerambycidae, the mandibles are modified to such an extent that they do not serve any feeding function, but are instead used to defend mating sites from other males. In some ants and termites, the mandibles also serve a defensive function (particularly in soldier castes). In bull ants, the mandibles are elongate and toothed, used both as hunting (and defensive) appendages. In bees, that feed primarily by use of a proboscis, the primary use of the mandibles is to manipulate and shape wax, and many paper wasps have mandibles adapted to scraping and ingesting wood fibres.
caption: European honeybee (Apis mellifera) lapping mouthparts, showing labium and maxillae
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