Robert Dudley

Professor

Lab: Dudley Lab

Email: wings@berkeley.edu
Office phone: 642-1555

Web site: http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/dudley/

Full contact information

Research interests

Our lab works on the biomechanics, energetics, and evolution of animal flight.  Flight performance is investigated using high-speed three-dimensional videography, metabolic measurements, particle-image velocimetry, and physically-variable gas mixtures.  Two current goals are to describe three-dimensional maneuvers in both hummingbirds and butterflies, and to evaluate the allometry of maximum lift and power production in Neotropical orchid bees and in hovering hummingbirds.  We also fly hummingbirds in a large wind tunnel to investigate forward flight performance.  Laboratory studies of flight biomechanics are complemented by fieldwork around the planet, including the ecophysiology of butterfly migrations in Panama, gliding in Southeast Asian flying lizards, hummingbird flight metabolism across elevational gradients in Peru, high-altitude adaptation in Sichuan bumblebees, and controlled aerial behavior in wingless hexapods of the Neotropical forest canopy.  Research students are encouraged to ask idiosyncratic biomechanical and ecophysiological questions to which a diversity of technological and phylogenetic approaches available in the lab may be applied.

Selected publications

Dillon, M., Frazier, M.R. and R. Dudley. 2006. Into thin air: physiology and evolution of alpine insects. Integrative and Comparative Biology 46:49-61.

Yanoviak, S.P. and R. Dudley. 2006. The role of visual cues in directed aerial descent of Cephalotes atratus workers (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Journal of Experimental Biology 209:1777-1783.

McGuire, J.A. and R. Dudley. 2005. The cost of living large: comparative gliding performance in flying lizards (Agamidae: Draco). American Naturalist 166:93-106.

Borrell, B.J., Goldbogen, J. and R. Dudley. 2005. Flapping aquatic propulsion at low Reynolds numbers: swimming kinematics of the Antarctic pteropod, Clione antarctica. Journal of Experimental Biology 208:2939-2949.

Yanoviak, S.P., Dudley, R. and M. Kaspari. 2005. Directed aerial descent in arboreal ants. Nature 433:624-626.

Altshuler, D.L., Dudley, R. and J.A. McGuire. 2004. Resolution of a paradox: hummingbird flight at high elevation does not come without a cost. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101:17731-17736.

Altshuler, D.L., Stiles, F.G., and R. Dudley. 2004. Of hummingbirds and helicopters: hovering  costs, competitive ability and foraging strategies. American Naturalist 163:16-25.

Dillon, M. and R. Dudley. 2004. Allometry of maximum vertical force production during hovering flight of neotropical orchid bees (Apidae: Euglossini). Journal of Experimental Biology 207:417-425.

Roberts, S.P., J.F. Harrison, and R. Dudley. 2004. Allometry of kinematics and energetics in carpenter bees (Xylocopa varipuncta) hovering in variable-density gases. Journal of Experimental Biology 207:993-1004.

Altshuler, D.L. and R. Dudley. 2003. Kinematics of hummingbird hovering flight along simulated and natural elevational gradients. Journal of Experimental Biology 206:3139-3147.

Dudley, R. 2002. Fermenting fruit and the historical ecology of ethanol ingestion: is alcoholism in modern humans an evolutionary hangover? Addiction 97:381-388.

Dudley, R. 2000. The Biomechanics of Insect Flight: Form, Function, Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 476 pp.