Mini-symposium on Animal Flight next week

In accordance with the dissertation of Florian Muijres on 28 April, CanMove will organize a mini-symposium on “Animal Flight” that will be held the next day Friday 29 April at 14.00h in Vitmossan (Tundran):

 Mini-symposium on Animal Flight

Friday 29 April at 14.00–16.30h

Vitmossan, Ecology building

 Biofluiddynamics of flight as an inspiration for design

David Lentink, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

On the equivalent of a flying brick

Aerodynamics of beetle flight

Sophia Engel, Lund University

Flight muscles

(exact title will follow later)

Tom Daniel, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

You are all very welcome!

CAnMove Symposium on Insect Flight

Our series of CAnMove symposia continues! Take a note in your calendars for the 29-30^th August 2011. These two days will be packed with exciting talks about one of the most successful groups of animals – insects!

Insects are model organisms for pretty much everything in biological research and therefore offer themselves to our current initiative to foster an integrated approach to the study of flight behavior.

Animal flight links a series of fundamental processes within both the physical and biological sciences: aerodynamics and biomechanics, physiological ecology, functional morphology, and evolutionary ecology, to name just a few. Therefore, our programme will cover a wide array of topics, and a number of experts in their fields have already committed to present their research - have a look at our (preliminary) programme that can be found here.

The symposium will be held in the Ecology Building. We very much welcome all people fascinated by the topic of insect flight and all CAnMove members to participate. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to present and discuss their work with a talk or a poster presentation - there will be ample opportunity for interaction and general discussion with all participants.

Registration: Attendance of the symposium is free, if you want to attend, please register here. The deadline for applications is July 15th.

Further information can be found on the CAnMove page, this page will be regularly updated.

We are looking forward to an exciting meeting, welcome!

Sophia, Anders and Erik

Easter crafts and arts!

Last Friday quite a few CAnMovians gathered in the technical lab to “påskpyssla” and have a beer. One of the missions was to manufacture swift nests for the nest boxes in the attic. Hopefully these start-kit-nests will help attract some more birds to the Ecology house colony later this spring.

There was also a competition in creating “the most flyable bird”, “the most innovative creation” and the “the most aesthetically pleasing bird”. The birds’ aerial skills were tested in a miniature wind tunnel, but regretfully none of the birds really left the ground. Eventually one bird did start to shiver its wings in an attempt to take off and so we had our winner! Not surprisingly…it was Anders Hedenström, head of the flight lab. Other proud winners were Åke Lindström, Petra Carlsson and Staffan Bensch who won “the jury’s choice” for his nicely crafted birds feet made of “piprensare”. Staffan later told us that he was inspired by a Japanese visiting researcher who could fold a perfect origami-bird out of just one paper.

Thanks to all who joined and helped with the nests!

Bat and bird flight spectacular

Florian Muijres PhD thesis entitles "Feathers by day, Membranes by night - Aerodynamic performance in bird and bat flight" has been published. The thesis contains seven different studies about aerodynamic performance in bats and birds. Two papers describe a high lift mechanism - Leading Edge Vortex - used by bats and pied flycatchers when flying slowly. This vortex enhances lift by 40% or more in these vertebrates, and before Florians work it was thought to be a typical insect mechanism. In other papers time-resolved PIV is used to work out aerodynamic efficiency of bats and birds, and to evaluate an adaptation of the classic actuator concept of flapping flight. Florian is to be congratulated to marvelous thesis, which is not only interesting on the inside but also beautiful on the outside. The public defense will take place on 28 April at 10:00 am, in the Blue Lecture Hall, Ecology Building, Lund. As faculty opponent we are very glad to welcome Professor Tom Daniel, University of Washington, Seattle.

What do birds have in common with dinosaurs?

What does a tiny little bird have in common with a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex? How can birds fly?
This, and more, is what Susanne Åkesson, coordinator of CAnMove, tells us about in the episode "Reptiles and Birds" in the Swedish TV-program "Tax & Tass", broadcasted by UR. If you want to watch the program right away you can click HERE (valid until October 3, 2011). You can also watch it on SVT 2, April 7 at 14.55 or SVT B, April 9 at 14.15.

Travels in time and space in microalgae

Yesterday CAnMove member Karin Rengefors was invited to speak at a SACT (Scientific Activities group) seminar. She was first introduced by the next speaker, Lars Hederstedt and then it was time for us to hear all about the tiny phytoplankton/microalgae and their fascinating life.

The background to her research are the well-known algal blooms that occur in both lakes and at sea every year. The different types of microalgae vary in both color, size and shape. Microalgae are not one genetic lineage but are composed of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic lineages, which also explains their diversity.

Phytoplankton have a planktonic phase where they live in the water and a benthic phase where they form cysts and live on the sea bottom, waiting for the right time to become a plankton again and reproduce.

Polarella glacialis (Dinophyceae) photographed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). (a) planktonic cell, (b) benthic resting cyst

During their planktonic phase they migrate actively in time (seasonal and diel migration) to avoid unfavorable environmental conditions, competition with other microalgae, predators and to reproduce. During their benthic phase they perform passive migration in space with the help of flowing water, wind, birds and insects.

You can learn more about Karins research here