Meeting Abstract

55.1  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Optomotor frequency response in hawkmoths. BOMPHREY, R.J.*; TAYLOR, G.K.; University of Oxford richard.bomphrey@zoo.ox.ac.uk

We investigated the optomotor responses of several species of hawkmoth in a virtual reality flight simulator. Subjects were rigidly tethered to a 6-component force-moment balance inside a 1m diameter sphere which served as a back-projection surface for providing wide field optic flow stimuli. The insects were presented with harmonic roll, pitch and yaw stimuli at discrete frequencies, and were also presented with frequency sweeps. The simulator allows us to present arbitrary moving greyscale patterns at temporal and spatial resolutions well in excess of those of the insects’ visual systems, so patterns were selected that would stimulate the optomotor response strongly, based on knowledge from previous studies of Lepidoptera. The dynamics of the insects’ responses to optomotor stimuli were analysed for all six measured components of force and torque, and were also analysed in respect of wing and head motions measured using a high-speed digital video camera and automated video tracking.