Body appendages fine-tune posture and moments in freely manoeuvring fruit flies

The Journal of Experimental Biology
Ruben Berthé, Fritz-Olaf Lehmann

Abstract

The precise control of body posture by turning moments is key to elevated locomotor performance in flying animals. Although elevated moments for body stabilization are typically produced by wing aerodynamics, animals also steer using drag on body appendages, shifting their centre of body mass, and changing moments of inertia caused by active alterations in body shape. To estimate the instantaneous contribution of each of these components for posture control in an insect, we three-dimensionally reconstructed body posture and movements of body appendages in freely manoeuvring fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) by high-speed video and experimentally scored drag coefficients of legs and body trunk at low Reynolds number. The results show that the sum of leg- and abdomen-induced yaw moments dominates wing-induced moments during 17% of total flight time but is, on average, 7.2-times (roll, 3.4-times) smaller during manoeuvring. Our data reject a previous hypothesis on synergistic moment support, indicating that drag on body appendages and mass-shift inhibit rather than support turning moments produced by the wings. Numerical modelling further shows that hind leg extension alters the moments of inertia around the three main body ax...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 17, 2016·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Michael H Dickinson, Florian T Muijres
Feb 7, 2017·Interface Focus·Yu ZengRobert Dudley
Dec 13, 2016·Journal of Comparative Physiology. A, Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology·Fritz-Olaf Lehmann, Jan Bartussek
Aug 24, 2018·Journal of Theoretical Biology·Tirthabir BiswasVikas Bhandawat

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