An Interspecific Comparison of Fruitfly Flight

There has been much interest in studying how aspects of animal locomotion are affected by variation in organism size and morphology. In the case of insect flight, we are particularly interested in how the mechanisms of lift production and the energy efficiency of flight are affected by size and wing-structure. Here, we analyze 3D free-flight data of fruitflies to study differences in flight performance between species of varying morphology in both wild-types and mutants.