What are Hexapods?
Hexapods, subphylum Hexapoda, is a group of arthropods that includes the insects and some close relatives, including springtails, proturans, and diplurans. Hexapods are probably monophyletic, meaning they all descend from a common ancestor, and include no members that didn’t descend from that ancestor. However, there is some evidence that springtails may have evolved their features independently, in an example of convergent evolution, although this is not the majority position. The relationships between members of Hexapoda is not entirely known — there are three primary cladistic hypotheses. Most other arthropods, such as spiders and crustaceans, have more than six legs. Hexapods’ signature characteristic is three pairs of legs, which is where they get their name (hexa means “six”), but they share many other features in common, including a consolidated thorax and genetic similarity. Hexapods diverged from their sister group, the fairy shrimps, around 440 million years ago, during the S
