Thesis subject
Wing damage in flying insects
Insects are highly-capable and robust flyers. Throughout their lifetime, insect wings accumulate significant amounts of damage, which negatively affects flight performance. Unlike birds or bats, insects cannot repair this wing damage and thus they need to cope with this damage for the rest of their life.
Instead of a wing repair mechanism, insects do possess various intricate mechanisms for minimizing or even completely stopping the growth of wing damage. But it is not yet known how these mechanisms work under natural flight conditions.
We are looking for a BSc or MSc student who wants to study the dynamics of wing damage growth in flying insect. By analyzing images from a high-speed camera, you will determine how a wing crack propagates throughout their life, and how this affects flight performance.
The skills your will be using/learning are: basic knowledge on experimental design and an interest in working with videography data. Knowledge of programming and statistics is preferred.
Skills you will be using/learning are:
- Basic knowledge on experimental design
- Working with videography data
- Programming
- 3D high speed video techniques
- Statistics
Are you interested? Please contact via ezo.thesis@wur.nl.