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Vortex wake, downwash distribution, aerodynamic performance and wingbeat kinematics in slow-flying pied flycatchers.

ABSTRACT: Many small passerines regularly fly slowly when catching prey, flying in cluttered environments or landing on a perch or nest. While flying slowly, passerines generate most of the flight forces during the downstroke, and have a 'feathered upstroke' during which they make their wing inactive by retracting it close to the body and by spreading the primary wing feathers. How this flight mode relates aerodynamically to the cruising flight and so-called 'normal hovering' as used in hummingbirds is not yet known. Here, we present time-resolved fluid dynamics data in combination with wingbeat kinematics data for three pied flycatchers flying across a range of speeds from near hovering to their calculated minimum power speed. Flycatchers are adapted to low speed flight, which they habitually use when catching insects on the wing. From the wake dynamics data, we constructed average wingbeat wakes and determined the time-resolved flight forces, the time-resolved downwash distributions and the resulting lift-to-drag ratios, span efficiencies and flap efficiencies. During the downstroke, slow-flying flycatchers generate a single-vortex loop wake, which is much more similar to that generated by birds at cruising flight speeds than it is to the double loop vortex wake in hovering hummingbirds. This wake structure results in a relatively high downwash behind the body, which can be explained by the relatively active tail in flycatchers. As a result of this, slow-flying flycatchers have a span efficiency which is similar to that of the birds in cruising flight and which can be assumed to be higher than in hovering hummingbirds. During the upstroke, the wings of slowly flying flycatchers generated no significant forces, but the body-tail configuration added 23 per cent to weight support. This is strikingly similar to the 25 per cent weight support generated by the wing upstroke in hovering hummingbirds. Thus, for slow-flying passerines, the upstroke cannot be regarded as inactive, and the tail may be of importance for flight efficiency and possibly manoeuvrability.

SUBMITTER: Muijres FT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3243385 | biostudies-other | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, cortical neurons alternate between ON periods of firing and OFF periods of silence. This bi-stability, which is largely synchronous across neurons, is reflected in the EEG as slow waves. Slow-wave activity (SWA) increases with wake duration and declines homeostatically during sleep, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. One possibility is neuronal "fatigue": high, sustained firing in wake would force neurons to recover with more frequent and longer OFF periods during sleep. Another possibility is net synaptic potentiation during wake: stronger coupling among neurons would lead to greater synchrony and therefore higher SWA. Here, we obtained a comparable increase in sustained firing (6 h) in cortex by: (1) keeping mice awake by exposure to novel objects to promote plasticity and (2) optogenetically activating a local population of cortical neurons at wake-like levels during sleep. Sleep after extended wake led to increased SWA, higher synchrony, and more time spent OFF, with a positive correlation between SWA, synchrony, and OFF periods. Moreover, time spent OFF was correlated with cortical firing during prior wake. After local optogenetic stimulation, SWA and cortical synchrony decreased locally, time spent OFF did not change, and local SWA was not correlated with either measure. Moreover, laser-induced cortical firing was not correlated with time spent OFF afterward. Overall, these results suggest that high sustained firing per se may not be the primary determinant of SWA increases observed after extended wake. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:A long-standing hypothesis is that neurons fire less during slow-wave sleep to recover from the "fatigue" accrued during wake, when overall synaptic activity is higher than in sleep. This idea, however, has rarely been tested and other factors, namely increased cortical synchrony, could explain why sleep slow-wave activity (SWA) is higher after extended wake. We forced neurons in the mouse cortex to fire at high levels for 6 h in 2 different conditions: during active wake with exploration and during sleep. We find that neurons need more time OFF only after sustained firing in wake, suggesting that fatigue due to sustained firing alone is unlikely to account for the increase in SWA that follows sleep deprivation.

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Vortex wake, downwash distribution, aerodynamic performance and wingbeat kinematics in slow-flying pied flycatchers.

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