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Sofia Chang

Aerodynamics of load carrying by flying insects

I am studying how small flying animals carry loads, focusing on how carrying large blood meals affects the take-off performance of a mosquitoes. I use high-speed videography to quantify how wing kinematics and flight performance are altered when mosquitoes carry a blood load, and I will be measuring the energetic cost of load-carrying during flight. In addition, I am using phylogenetic and scaling analyses to unravel the evolutionary morphology of mosquitoes that feed on blood versus those that have lost that capability.

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