Meeting Abstract
Wing flexural stiffness plays an important role in our understanding of insect flight and other behaviors. Wing condition during testing is especially important to the generalizability of the findings. Structural damage will play a significant role in altering the flexural stiffness; the degree of alteration can be expected to vary for damage to wing veins or interveinal regions. In addition, variation in the “freshness” of the wings and their veins can also be expected also play a role because moisture in the wing is lost over time as dissected wings and veins become dry and more brittle. Testing wings and their veins immediately after dissection may be a good way to measure flexural stiffness that approximates living specimens but it is not clear whether drying affects wings or wing veins differently in different wing regions. Further, the contribution of wing veins to wing flexural stiffness may vary. We tested wings and dissected veins from 3 species Lycaenid butterflies. The flexural stiffness increases over time; dry wings can be almost 50% stiffer than fresh wings at certain locations along the length of the wings and a similar pattern with drying occurs in wing veins. In addition, the contribution of the fresh veins to the flexural stiffness of the whole wing is not same as the contribution of dry veins to the flexural stiffness of the dry wings.
