Life at the edge of stability: physics and neural control of insect flight
ORAL · Invited
Abstract
Insects are key to understanding the origin and evolution of flight. They were the first organisms to evolve flight and have since become the most abundant species on Earth. I will discuss our work on building mathematical models and computational methods, along with behavioral experiments, to reveal and explain the connection between the physics of flight and insects' evolved neural algorithms for flight. I will also present new general criteria for flight stability and discuss their implications for evolutionary questions.
*NSF Physics of Living Systems.
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Publication: Wetherbee and Wang, Discovery of Stable Flapping Flight, submitted
Wang, Melfi Jr., Leonardo, Recovery Mechanisms in the Dragonfly Righting Reflex, Science 2022
Wang, Insect Flight, from Newton's Law to Neurons, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2016
Presenters
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Z Jane Wang
- Cornell University
- Cornell