Investigating wind effects on insect migration

Authors

  • Zhenhua Hao School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW Canberra 2610
  • Alistair Drake School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW Canberra 2610, and Institute of Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Canberra 2601
  • Leesa Sidhu School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW Canberra 2610
  • John Robert Taylor School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW Canberra 2610

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21914/anziamj.v56i0.9349

Abstract

Understanding the response of migrating insects to the wind along their path is an active area in insect migration research. In this article, two methods for describing wind response are illustrated and evaluated by analysing a model of migratory movement with a realistic scatter in the flight direction. The results show that both methods give robust and reliable results when insects simply maintain a constant heading in response to winds with a cross track component. However, neither method is reliable for evaluating whether insects are compensating for wind drift and maintaining a constant track towards their destination. References
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Published

2016-02-17

Issue

Vol. 56 (2014)

Section

Proceedings Computational Techniques and Applications Conference