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Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles
Flight speed is positively correlated with body size in animals(1). However, miniature featherwing beetles can fly at speeds and accelerations of insects three times their size(2). Here we show that this performance results from a reduced wing mass and a previously unknown type of wing-motion cycle....
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8810381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35046578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04303-7 |
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author | Farisenkov, Sergey E. Kolomenskiy, Dmitry Petrov, Pyotr N. Engels, Thomas Lapina, Nadezhda A. Lehmann, Fritz-Olaf Onishi, Ryo Liu, Hao Polilov, Alexey A. |
author_facet | Farisenkov, Sergey E. Kolomenskiy, Dmitry Petrov, Pyotr N. Engels, Thomas Lapina, Nadezhda A. Lehmann, Fritz-Olaf Onishi, Ryo Liu, Hao Polilov, Alexey A. |
author_sort | Farisenkov, Sergey E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Flight speed is positively correlated with body size in animals(1). However, miniature featherwing beetles can fly at speeds and accelerations of insects three times their size(2). Here we show that this performance results from a reduced wing mass and a previously unknown type of wing-motion cycle. Our experiment combines three-dimensional reconstructions of morphology and kinematics in one of the smallest insects, the beetle Paratuposa placentis (body length 395 μm). The flapping bristled wings follow a pronounced figure-of-eight loop that consists of subperpendicular up and down strokes followed by claps at stroke reversals above and below the body. The elytra act as inertial brakes that prevent excessive body oscillation. Computational analyses suggest functional decomposition of the wingbeat cycle into two power half strokes, which produce a large upward force, and two down-dragging recovery half strokes. In contrast to heavier membranous wings, the motion of bristled wings of the same size requires little inertial power. Muscle mechanical power requirements thus remain positive throughout the wingbeat cycle, making elastic energy storage obsolete. These adaptations help to explain how extremely small insects have preserved good aerial performance during miniaturization, one of the factors of their evolutionary success. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8810381 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88103812022-02-09 Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles Farisenkov, Sergey E. Kolomenskiy, Dmitry Petrov, Pyotr N. Engels, Thomas Lapina, Nadezhda A. Lehmann, Fritz-Olaf Onishi, Ryo Liu, Hao Polilov, Alexey A. Nature Article Flight speed is positively correlated with body size in animals(1). However, miniature featherwing beetles can fly at speeds and accelerations of insects three times their size(2). Here we show that this performance results from a reduced wing mass and a previously unknown type of wing-motion cycle. Our experiment combines three-dimensional reconstructions of morphology and kinematics in one of the smallest insects, the beetle Paratuposa placentis (body length 395 μm). The flapping bristled wings follow a pronounced figure-of-eight loop that consists of subperpendicular up and down strokes followed by claps at stroke reversals above and below the body. The elytra act as inertial brakes that prevent excessive body oscillation. Computational analyses suggest functional decomposition of the wingbeat cycle into two power half strokes, which produce a large upward force, and two down-dragging recovery half strokes. In contrast to heavier membranous wings, the motion of bristled wings of the same size requires little inertial power. Muscle mechanical power requirements thus remain positive throughout the wingbeat cycle, making elastic energy storage obsolete. These adaptations help to explain how extremely small insects have preserved good aerial performance during miniaturization, one of the factors of their evolutionary success. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-01-19 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8810381/ /pubmed/35046578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04303-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Farisenkov, Sergey E. Kolomenskiy, Dmitry Petrov, Pyotr N. Engels, Thomas Lapina, Nadezhda A. Lehmann, Fritz-Olaf Onishi, Ryo Liu, Hao Polilov, Alexey A. Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title | Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title_full | Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title_fullStr | Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title_full_unstemmed | Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title_short | Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
title_sort | novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8810381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35046578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04303-7 |
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