Measuring the Flight Ability of the Ambrosia Beetle, Platypus Quercivorus (Murayama), Using a Low-Cost, Small, and Easily Constructed Flight Mill

This method can help answer key questions in the entomology and forensic fields such as control of the migration of pests. The main advantage of this technique is to easily measure migratory distance and speed of a small insect in a laboratory under a controlled condition. Begin the construction of the spinning portion of the flight mill.

First, remove the plastic portion of an acupuncture needle. A 40 millimeter long metal needle with a 0.25 millimeter diameter. Then, using an epoxy adhesive, make a cross with the modified needle and an unmodified needle of the same size.

This makes the flight mill arm and an axial needle. Next, prepare a small metal plate. Hammer a dimple into the center of the plate where the axial needle will attach.

Then, secure the plate to a wooden base using adhesive tape. Next, make a plastic cylinder to hold the spinning axis of the mill. Cut a plastic pipette to make it the same length with the double-L plate, which has an outside diameter of 4 millimeter and an interior diameter of 3 millimeter.

Then attach these parts to the base plate with the cylinder over the dimple and with the double-L plate stabilizing the cylinder. Now make a holder from an L-shaped piece of metal and screw the metal to a vertical wooden board to stabilize the assembly. Into the hole of another L plate, fit a small metal cap that is about 10 millimeters long and one millimeter in diameter.

A snap button can work for this purpose. Now add an infrared photo sensor to count the revolutions. First, incorporate the IR sensor into the circuit board, and then, screw the circuit board into the L plate.

The path of the plastic part of the crossed needles must pass directly below the sensor for the assembly to function. Next, secure a 150 milliwatt infrared LED attached to circuit substrate to a small magnet using glue. Then place the LED on the base plate beneath the photo sensor.

Finally, connect the photo sensor to an analog input channel of an AD convertor. Next bundle all the cabling and fix the cables to the plate. Lastly, connect the AD convertor to a personal computer via a USB cable.

On the morning of the experiment collect all of the freshly emerged P.Quercivorus adults from a dead Qercus crispula bloom tree. More than 100 beetles are commonly harvested. Next, put a beetle on ice for anesthetization.

Avoid getting the beetle wet, or it will be difficult to complete the procedure. Now, using two component glue, put a dab of the jelly consistency component on the tip of the mill arm. Then attach the mill arm to the beetle's pronotum.

Next, using a fine needle, mix a small amount of the liquid glue component into a jelly glue component. Do not get any glue on the beetle's wings. Once the glue is hardened, use a magnet on the top plate to slide the plates apart and easily reinsert the flight mill into the apparatus.

Next, tweak the position of the infrared LED so that it is directly beneath the sensor. When the beetle awakens it will begin to fly. Then start recording the amplified output from the photo sensor at a sampling rate of 1000 hertz.

As the mill spins with the beetle's flight the IR beam gets disrupted by the plastic piece leading to a voltage jump on the sensor from 0 to 3.7 volts. If the recording threshold exceeds 0.5 volts, the data is good for analysis. Using the software controls start the recording by clicking on the plus symbol on the logging icon in the workspace window.

Then right-click on the log name and select Begin Logging Set"To stop the recording, right-click the log name and select End Logging Set"The data will be saved to a csv file. In these experiment about half of the beetles attached to the flight mill showed one or more revolutions. Sometime after being attached most beetles started flying for a certain period and then flew again after a rest interval.

Each beetle was recorded for at least one hour. The average beetle flew at 0.75 to 1.5 meters per second. Any beetle that flew less than a kilometer was omitted from the analysis.

For 16 beetles that met this criterion the minimum flight time was 1.26 hours without energy intake, and the longest time and distance was 7.5 hours and 27.1 kilometers. In this cohort, no significant difference was found between males and females. After watching this video you will quickly collect plenty of data because this flight mill is low-cost, small, and easily constructed.

And not to much many flight mill. Since its development, this method has paved the way for research in the field of basic biology as well as pest management to explore new avenues of the physiology and ecology of small flying insects. By modifying this method, for example by installing an odor delivery system or illumination system, we can explore how sensory information influence the flying capacity.