Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Clap and fling, or the Weis-Fogh mechanism, discovered by the Danish zoologist Torkel Weis-Fogh, is a lift generation method utilized during small insect flight. [17] As insect sizes become less than 1 mm, viscous forces become dominant and the efficacy of lift generation from an airfoil decreases drastically. Starting from the clap position ...
The origin of insect flight remains obscure, since the earliest winged insects currently known appear to have been capable fliers. Some extinct insects (e.g. the Palaeodictyoptera ) had an additional pair of winglets attached to the first segment of the thorax , for a total of three pairs.
There are two basic aerodynamic models of insect flight. Most insects use a method that creates a spiralling leading edge vortex. [19] [20] Some very small insects use the fling-and-clap or Weis-Fogh mechanism in which the wings clap together above the insect's body and then fling apart. As they fling open, the air gets sucked in and creates a ...
The second tagma, the thorax, bears the wings and contains the flight muscles on the second segment, which is greatly enlarged; the first and third segments have been reduced to collar-like structures, and the third segment bears the halteres, which help to balance the insect during flight.
The muscles that control flight in insects can take up to 10% to 30% of the total body mass. The muscles that control flight vary with the two types of flight found in insects: indirect and direct. Insects that use first, indirect, have the muscles attach to the tergum instead of the wings, as the name suggests.
Adults capture insect prey in the air, making use of their acute vision and highly controlled flight. Dragonfly returns to same perch each time it darts out to catch very small flying prey. The mating system of dragonflies is complex, and they are among the few insect groups that have a system of indirect sperm transfer along with sperm storage ...
This leads to a highly-efficient resonant system. When wingbeat frequencies match the resonant frequency of the muscle-thorax system, flight is most efficient. In order to change wingbeat frequencies to avoid obstacles or generate more lift, insects use smaller "control" muscles such as the pleurosternal muscles to stiffen the thorax. [9]
The majority of insects have two pairs of wings. Flies possess only one set of lift-generating wings and one set of halteres. The order name for flies, "Diptera", literally means "two wings", but there is another order of insect which has evolved flight with only two wings: strepsipterans, or stylops; [2] they are the only other organisms that possess two wings and two halteres. [6]