Thesis subject
Escape maneuvers of flying insects
Insects are highly-maneuverable flyers, which we all have experienced when trying to swat a fly or mosquito. To escaping a swatting hand, day-active flies and night-active mosquitoes make use of strikingly different escape strategies, both optimized for their natural light conditions. But how other insects do this, is not yet known.
We are looking for a BSc or MSc student who wants to study the escape flight kinematics of flying insect. In this project you can choose your favorite insect and study how these animals escape from an artificial swatter using rapid escape maneuvers. To do so, you will help develop the experimental setup, including an artificial swatter and a stereoscopic high-speed camera system. You will then collect or rear your insects, perform your experiments and analyze high-speed stereoscopic videos of the escapes.
Skills you will be using/learning are:
- Experimental design
- Insect behaviour
- Working with live animals
- 3D high speed video techniques
- programming
- Statistics
Are you interested? Please contact via ezo.thesis@wur.nl.