Walking and swimming and flying, oh my: the multimodal biomechanics and fluid dynamics of freshwater insects

Many animals, including humans, can transition between multiple modes of locomotion between diverse environments. Bimodality is common, but trimodality—that is, the ability to successfully navigate between aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial environments—is relatively rare. Multimodality is also challenging to achieve in engineered devices, vehicles, and robots—however, several animals are capable of regularly traversing these environmental boundaries. In this talk, we will outline several of the general adaptations that living organisms use to locomote between land, air, and water. We will then focus on recent research in the Environmental and Biological Fluid Mechanics Laboratory which focus on the biomechanics of aquatic insects, many of which are capable of walking, swimming, and flying within the same life stage. These insects exhibit hybrid walking-swimming gaits when transitioning from land to shallow water; they also leverage surface tension, buoyancy, fluid drag, and aerodynamic forces to take off into flight directly from the water surface. They also display underwater agility, using their legs as paddles to propel themselves rapidly as they seek prey and/or escape from predators. Interesting morphological features enabling these transitions include superhydrophobic wings and hemelytra, and dense setae lining the metathoracic legs which create shape-morphing appendages for efficient swimming. We will present data from all three locomotor modes and discuss their implications for both fundamental biology and ecology as well as bioinspired engineering and technology development.

Additional Information:

Bio: Dr. Margaret L. Byron is currently the Martin W. Trethewey Early Career Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University, and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the American Chemical Society Doctoral New Investigator Award. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2010 and her MS/PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California Berkeley in 2012/2015. She works at the interface of biology, physics, and engineering, with interests including the fluid dynamics of animal locomotion and the transport of irregularly shaped inertial particles in turbulent flows (including sediment, aggregates, and microplastics)