A Simple Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Flight in Insects

Attisano, Alfredo; Murphy, James T.; Vickers, Andrew; Moore, Patricia J.

doi:10.3791/53377

Cited by 24 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…The simple, modern flight mill provides a range of advantages for researchers interested in studying the flight behavior of a model species by delivering a reliable and automated design that tests multiple insects efficiently and costeffectively 10,22 . Likewise, there is a strong incentive for researchers to adapt to fast-emerging technologies and techniques from industry and other scientific fields to design and build experimental tools to study ecological systems 9,[23][24] .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the recent rise of emerging technologies at makerspaces, particularly at institutions with digital media centers run by knowledgeable staff 9 , there are greater possibilities to enhance the flight mill to accommodate a larger range of insects, to test and analyze multiple insects, and to transport the device to the field. The flight mill presented here (adapted from Attisano and colleagues 10 ) takes advantage of emerging technologies found in makerspaces not only to create flight mill components whose scales and dimensions are fine-tuned to the project at hand, but also to offer researchers a general and sufficient protocol in laser cutting and 3D printing without demanding a high-budget or specialized knowledge in computer aided design (CAD) models.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Thanks to institutional access to a communal makerspace, all enhancements were free and, compared to the simple modern flight mill, no additional costs were accrued. All software needed are free, the electronic circuitry is simple, and all scripts, adapted from Attisano et al 2015 10 , can be modified to follow the specific needs of the experimental design. Lastly, coded diagnostics allow the user to check the integrity and precision of their recordings.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Benefits of Makerspaces: Building An Enhanced Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Insect Flight v1

Bernat¹

2020

Preprint

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Makerspaces have a high potential of enabling researchers to develop new techniques and work with novel species in ecological research. This protocol demonstrates how to take advantage of the technology increasingly found in makerspaces in order to build a more versatile flight mill for a relatively low cost. Since this flight mill and trial design initially extracts its prototype from flight mills built in the last decade, this protocol instead focuses more on outlining divergences made from the simple, modern flight mill. As already shown, previous studies have made known how advantageous flight mills are to measuring flight parameters such as speed, distance, or periodicity and to allowing researchers to associate these parameters with morphological, physiological, or genetic factors. In addition to these advantages, I discuss the benefits of using the technology in makerspaces like 3D printers and laser cutters in order to build a more flexible, sturdy, and collapsible flight mill design. Most notably, the 3D printed components of this design allow the user to adjust the mill arm and IR sensor heights to test insects of various sizes and enable the user to easily disassemble the machine for quick storage or transportation to the field. Moreover, I emphasize making greater use of magnets and magnetic paint to attach insects with minimal stress during flight trials. Lastly, this protocol details a versatile analysis of flight data by programming how to efficiently take and process continuous but differentiable flight trials. Although more labor-intensive, communallyshared makerspaces and free, online 3D modeling programs can help researchers avoid costly, pre-made products with narrowly adjustable dimensions. By taking advantage of the flexibility and reproducibility of technology in makerspaces, this protocol promotes creative flight mill design and inspires open science.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Benefits of Makerspaces: Building An Enhanced Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Insect Flight v1

Bernat¹

2020

Preprint

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“…A custom-made mosquito flight-mill, based on (Attisano et al, 2015), was made from 5 mm thick clear acrylic panels (10 cm W × 10 cm L × 10 cm H) lacking front and back panels (Fig. 3: top).…”

Section: Tethered Flight Assaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Malaria mosquitoes acquire and allocate cattle urine to enhance life history traits

Dawit

Hill

Birgersson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Nutrient acquisition and allocation integrate foraging and life-history traits in insects. To compensate for the lack of a particular nutrient at different life stages, insects may acquire these through supplementary feeding on e.g., vertebrate secretions, in a process known as puddling. The mosquito Anopheles arabiensis emerges undernourished, and as such, requires nutrients for both metabolism and reproduction. Host-seeking and blood-fed An. arabiensis are attracted to the natural and synthetic odour of cattle urine, which signals a source of nutrients, but not the presence of a host or oviposition site. Females actively imbibe cattle urine, and its main nitrogenous compound, urea, and allocate these resources according to life history trade-offs to flight, survival or reproduction, as a function of physiological state. As a consequence, this behaviour affects vectorial capacity by increasing daily survival and vector density, and thus should be considered in future models. Future vector management strategies are discussed.

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“…Multiple systems exist for doing this, including wind tunnels (Vogel, 1966) (reviewed for the use in birds in Hedenström & Lindström, 2017) and free-flight chambers (Byrne, 1999;Blackmer et al, 2004;Perez-Mendoza et al, 2011). Recently, however, there has been a resurgence in the use of tethered flight systems as a means of determining the flight potential of migratory insects (Attisano et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2015;Cheng et al, 2016;Jones et al, 2016;Marti-Campoy et al, 2016). Tethered flight mills enable the continuous measurement of flight parameters over a prolonged period of time and have been used for the past 50-60 years to study behaviour both during foraging flights [e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The tethered flight technique as a tool for studying life‐history strategies associated with migration in insects

Minter

Pearson

Lim

et al. 2018

Ecological Entomology

129

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1. Every year billions of insects engage in long‐distance, seasonal mass migrations which have major consequences for agriculture, ecosystem services and insect‐vectored diseases. Tracking this movement in the field is difficult, with mass migrations often occurring at high altitudes and over large spatial scales.2. As such, tethered flight provides a valuable tool for studying the flight behaviour of insects, giving insights into flight propensity (e.g. distance, duration and velocity) and orientation under controlled laboratory settings. By experimentally manipulating a variety of environmental and physiological traits, numerous studies have used this technology to study the flight behaviour of migratory insects ranging in size from aphids to butterflies. Advances in functional genomics promise to extend this to the identification of genetic factors associated with flight. Tethered flight techniques have been used to study migratory flight characteristics in insects for more than 50 years, but have never been reviewed.3. This study summarises the key findings of this technology, which has been employed in studies of species from six Orders. By providing detailed descriptions of the tethered flight systems, the present study also aims to further the understanding of how tethered flight studies support field observations, the situations under which the technology is useful and how it might be used in future studies.4. The aim is to contextualise the available tethered flight studies within the broader knowledge of insect migration and to describe the significant contribution these systems have made to the literature.

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A Simple Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Flight in Insects

Cited by 24 publications

References 19 publications

Benefits of Makerspaces: Building An Enhanced Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Insect Flight v1

Benefits of Makerspaces: Building An Enhanced Flight Mill for the Study of Tethered Insect Flight v1

Malaria mosquitoes acquire and allocate cattle urine to enhance life history traits

The tethered flight technique as a tool for studying life‐history strategies associated with migration in insects

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