You’ve just seen that molting out of the exoskeleton may limit the size of terrestrial arthropods. Does the exoskeleton cause other problems for outsized arthropods? To figure out the answer, we’ll see what happens to the exoskeleton and the muscles that move it when an arthropod is scaled up.
Home → The Arthropod Story → An evolutionary constraint: Small size → Exoskeleton strength: The physics of failure