The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama, is one of the most serious citrus pests worldwide due to its role as vector of huanglongbing or citrus greening disease. While some optimal plant species for ACP oviposition and development have been identified, little is known of the influence of host plants on ACP size and shape. Our goal was to determine how size and shape of ACP win...

The molecular chaperone protein Hsp90 has been widely discussed as a candidate gene for developmental buffering. We used the methods of geometric morphometrics to analyze its effects on the variation among individuals and fluctuating asymmetry of wing shape in Drosophila melanogaster. Three different experimental approaches were used to reduce Hsp90 activity. In the first experiment, developing...

This paper applies an exergy-based method on the two-dimensional airfoil and various threedimensional wing planforms to investigate the impact of exergy on aerodynamic designs. Our intent here is to report our efforts to couple a numerical code with an exergy analysis, a shape shifting algorithm and an optimization code to achieve desired airfoil and wing shapes. Exergy-based optimization is pe...

The paper presents work on testing of inflatable wings for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Design and construction of inflatable wings is discussed, along with ground and flight testing. Predictions and correlations of the forces required to warp (twist) the wings to a particular shape and the aerodynamic forces generated by that shape change are presented. The focus is on characterizing the d...

As one of the most important components of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), the design of an energy-efficient flapping-wing has been a research interest recently. Research on insect flight from different perspectives has been carried out, mainly with regard to wing morphology, flapping kinematics, and unsteady aerodynamics. However, the link between the wing morphology and kinematics ...

BACKGROUND Within genus Drosophila, the endemic Hawaiian species offer some of the most dramatic examples of morphological and behavioral evolution. The advent of the Drosophila grimshawi genome sequence permits genes of interest to be readily cloned from any of the hundreds of species of Hawaiian Drosophila, offering a powerful comparative approach to defining molecular mechanisms of species e...

Wing geometric parameters govern the aerodynamic performance of insects and micro aerial vehicles. Previous studies of wing shapes have been limited to rigid wings. The aerodynamic hovering performance of rigid and flexible wing shapes for aspect ratio AR = 1.5 is evaluated computationally at the Reynolds number (Re) of 400. The three-dimensional viscous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations a...

Animal wings are lightweight and flexible; hence, during flapping flight their shapes change. It has been known that such dynamic wing morphing reduces aerodynamic cost in insects, but the consequences in vertebrate flyers, particularly birds, are not well understood. We have developed a method to reconstruct a three-dimensional wing model of a bird from the wing outline and the feather shafts ...

Most batoids have a unique swimming mode in which thrust is generated by either oscillating or undulating expanded pectoral fins that form a disc. Only one previous study of the freshwater stingray has quantified three-dimensional motions of the wing, and no comparable data are available for marine batoid species that may differ considerably in their mode of locomotion. Here, we investigate thr...

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) and flapping flight in connection to that. The Delft University of Technology has developed a flapping wing MAV, “DelFly II”, which relies on a flapping bi-plane wing configuration for thrust and lift. The ultimate aim of the present research is to improve the flight performance of the DelFly II from both an aerodynam...