Ok So, I Skimmed The Books And:

ok so, I skimmed the books and:

yeah, Clearsight never actually CALLS them “BeetleWings”, she just compares them to beetles. But she also only remarked about two tribes, LeafWings and an unarmed tribe, leading many to believe that this was an earlier version of SilkWings that the Fandom had nicknamed “BeetleWings”. The funny thing? They don’t actually exist. In fact, the place I could have sworn I read “BeetleWings” doesn’t mention the word “beetle” even once

Specifically, I was thinking of Lady Scarab’s explanation of how HiveWings came to be, where it says:

notice that she never actually says “beetle”, she says “Maybe they weren’t called SilkWings back then. ShimmerWings or Flibbergibbets or something in the old language, I don’t know. But Clearsight married one, and then another one when the first one died, and had an alarming number of dragonets with each one, and then their dragonets and their dragonets’ dragonets kept going, marrying Ye Olde SilkWings or what have you, until there were enough of them to be considered their own tribe. HiveWings.”

So the answer? Technically, yes, they came from SilkWings and NightWings. But according to fanon interpretations, that old version of SilkWings are colloquially known as BeetleWings, so… yes and no?

(References: The Lost Continent (Prologue) and The Hive Queen (pages 182 and 183))

here’s the evolution tree for reference! Also explains why Mudwings look so much like SeaWings*

*none of these are to scale