Meeting Abstract
Unlike wings of vertebrates, insect wings can only be actuated and controlled at the wing base. All wing deformations are results of passive interactions between aerodynamic loading and wing structural mechanics. This property of the wing is called aeroelasticity. To control and monitor such a complex system, insects have evolved an assortment of mechanosensors on the wing veins. It is not known, however, what and how each wing sensor captures information to support flight control. Dragonflies were the first insects to take flight over 300 million years ago, and remain the top flier in the insect world. Not surprisingly, their wings have significantly more mechanosensors than other insects’ wings. Identifying the positioning and function of each type of sensor in the dragonfly wings is likely to reveal the key to aeroelastic sensing. We combined different imaging techniques to quantify the distribution of wing sensors and identified a novel sensor type. Punctuating the major wing veins, this mechanosensory consists of one bristle and one curious bump structure. To gain insight into how this sensor might function to detect flight-relevant forces, we modelled the interactions between sensors and surrounding airflow. Our simulations show that the bump filters out airflow in spanwise direction and that the aerodynamic forces acting on the sensor in chordwise direction differ with varying flight velocity. Thus, we speculate that the sensor location on the ridges of the wing veins enables the sensor to detect changes in the surrounding chordwise airflow.
