Near-surface wind variability over spatiotemporal scales relevant to plume tracking insects.

Odor plume tracking is important for many organisms, and flying insects have served as popular model systems for studying this behavior both in field and laboratory settings. The shape and statistics of the airborne odor plumes that insects follow are largely governed by the wind that advects them. Prior atmospheric studies have investigated aspects of microscale wind patterns with an emphasis on characterizing pollution dispersion, enhancing weather prediction models, and for assessing wind energy potential.

Active anemosensing hypothesis: how flying insects could estimate ambient wind direction through sensory integration and active movement.

Estimating the direction of ambient fluid flow is a crucial step during chemical plume tracking for flying and swimming animals. How animals accomplish this remains an open area of investigation. Recent calcium imaging with tethered flying has shown that flies encode the angular direction of multiple sensory modalities in their central complex: orientation, apparent wind (or airspeed) direction and direction of motion.