ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2015
A new twist on gyroscopic sensing: body rotations lead to torsion in flapping, flexing insect wings.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Deciphering the flapping frequency allometry: unveiling the role of sustained body attitude in the aerodynamic scaling of normal hovering animals.Biology open · 2025Article
- Evolution, types, and distribution of flight control devices on wings and elytra in bark beetles.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Intraspecific Variation in the Placement of Campaniform Sensilla on the Wings of the HawkmothIntegrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Nonuniform structural properties of wings confer sensing advantages.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Article
- Wing structure and neural encoding jointly determine sensing strategies in insect flight.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Maximally efficient prediction in the early fly visual system may support evasive flight maneuvers.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Timing precision in fly flight control: integrating mechanosensory input with muscle physiology.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Flies Regulate Wing Motion via Active Control of a Dual-Function Gyroscope.Current biology : CB · 2019Article
- Coriolis and centrifugal forces drive haltere deformations and influence spike timing.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Insect and insect-inspired aerodynamics: unsteadiness, structural mechanics and flight control.Current opinion in insect science · 2018Article
- Neural-inspired sensors enable sparse, efficient classification of spatiotemporal data.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Single mechanosensory neurons encode lateral displacements using precise spike timing and thresholds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Sensory processing by motoneurons: a numerical model for low-level flight control in flies.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Article
- Neural evidence supports a dual sensory-motor role for insect wings.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- The aerodynamics and control of free flight manoeuvres in Drosophila.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Insects perform fast rotational manoeuvres during flight. While two insect orders use flapping halteres (specialized organs evolved from wings) to detect body dynamics, it is unknown how other insects detect rotational motions. Like halteres, insect wings experience gyroscopic forces when they are flapped and rotated and recent evidence suggests that wings might indeed mediate reflexes to body rotations. But, can gyroscopic forces be detected using only changes in the structural dynamics of a flapping, flexing insect wing? We built computational and robotic models to rotate a flapping wing about an axis orthogonal to flapping. We recorded high-speed video of the model wing, which had a flexural stiffness similar to the wing of the Manduca sexta hawkmoth, while flapping it at the wingbeat frequency of Manduca (25 Hz). We compared the three-dimensional structural dynamics of the wing with and without a 3 Hz, 10° rotation about the yaw axis. Our computational model revealed that body rotation induces a new dynamic mode: torsion. We verified our result by measuring wing tip displacement, shear strain and normal strain of the robotic wing. The strains we observed could stimulate an insect's mechanoreceptors and trigger reflexive responses to body rotations.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.