Berkeley Fluids Seminar
University of California, Berkeley
Bring your lunch and enjoy learning about fluids!
March 10, 2014
Prof. Robert Dudley (Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley)
From Gliding Ants to Andean Hummingbirds: The Evolution of Animal Flight Performance
Unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms underpinning animal flight have recently been intensively studied, but less well understood are those evolutionary pathways leading to the acquisition and subsequent elaboration of flapping flight. Recently discovered behaviors in Neotropical canopy ants demonstrate directed aerial descent in the complete absence of wings; controlled aerial behavior has preceded the origin of wings in insects and other flying animals. Use of experimental gas mixtures decoupling physiological from biomechanical limits to performance can elucidate physical constraints on flight in fully volant forms. Such constraints are revealed on an evolutionary timescale through the application of combined phylogenetic and biomechanical analyses to hummingbird and bumblebee flight capacity across steep altitudinal transects.
Acknowledgments
Prof. Graham Fleming (Vice Chancellor for Research, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Eliot Quataert on behalf of The Theoretical Astrophysics Center and the Astronomy Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Philip S. Marcus on behalf of the Mechanical Engineering Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Michael Manga (Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Evan Variano (Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley)