Flight Turbulence: New Study Explores How Flies Navigate Unstable Convective Air
When insects migrate over vast distances, many take advantage of a natural phenomenon called thermal convection, which causes flow movement when air at
different temperatures interact. Hitching a ride on invisible rollercoasters called convection cells, insects—like aphids and spiders—follow the flow of warm air upwards and cold air downwards.
“They are floating up to 3,000 feet,” said Victor Ortega-Jimenez, an assistant project scientist in the Combes Lab at UC Davis, of this movement.
“All these clouds of insects are floating up there and moving in these convection cell patterns.”
Ortega-Jimenez has long wondered about the aerodynamics of insect flight in convection cells. In a new study appearing in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Ortega-Jimenez and Assistant Professor Stacey Combes, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, provide detailed data on how fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) maintain stability while flying through convection cells on a small scale.