Conference: Evolution, physiology and biomechanics of insect flight

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Public Award Abstract This conference award supports a symposium and associated workshop on insect flight at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in January 2024. Flight is a key adaptation of insects, enabling their capacities to migrate and pollinate, and thus is critical to the roles of insects both as beneficial animals and pests. However, there are many remaining unknowns about insect flight, limiting the understanding of the evolutionary origins of flight, how ecological conditions such as climate change will affect flying insects, and how to manage flying insect pests. Answering questions about insect flight requires an integration of molecular, biochemical, physiological, ecological, and biomechanical perspectives. The award addresses these needs by bringing together scientists from diverse backgrounds and characteristics, and from a range of biological subdisciplines including molecular evolution, biomechanics and physiology, as symposium speakers. In addition, a workshop, eleven publications, and community building activities are being supported. Travel awards will be provided for trainees in the complementary sessions, and a network that will allow for student training exchanges will be created. A database and email listserv will be created to connect researchers across fields, training levels, and institutions. Promotion of a diverse scientific workforce will occur as trainees will be involved in all aspects of the preparation, execution, and community building for the symposium. Diversity and inclusion in biological sciences will be enhanced by featuring research from groups historically excluded from science. The unparalleled diversity of insects is often attributed to the evolution of powered flight in the Pterygote (winged) insect lineage around 400 million years ago, providing benefits of dispersal from inhospitable sites, mate finding, resource acquisition, and escape from predators. Despite the critical importance of flight to insects, many questions remain, including an understanding of how insects evolved flight, how genetic differences translate to functional differences in flight morphology, physiology, and behavior, and how clade-specific variants in flight morphology and physiology are related to ecological conditions. In terms of physiology, many areas remain poorly understood, including how insects manage the costs of migration, the relationship between life history and flight muscle plasticity, and the relationship between flight mechanics and flight muscle cost. In terms of biomechanics, a solid understanding of how insects steer and fly in complex, turbulent environments, the neurosensory and aerodynamic mechanisms of flight, and the location and dynamics of energy storage are lacking. The supported symposium will bring together researchers working on the evolution, ecology, physiology, and biomechanics of flight to stimulate integration of these fields to answer questions about how and why flight arose and is maintained in insects. By bringing together researchers, including early-career investigators, from different disciplines who share an interest in insect flight, an interdisciplinary community will be built that will enhance our ability to overcome obstacles and generate new research directions in integrative biology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.