Bond, Sarah

Evry, James

Fayet, Annette L.

Gillies, Natasha

Guilford, Tim

Juarez-Martinez, Ignacio

Kavelaars, Marwa

Kempton, James A.

Padget, Oliver

Rutz, Christian

Shoji, Akiko

Syposz, Martyna

Taylor, Graham K.

Wynn, Joe

Abstract: Dynamic soaring harvests energy from a spatiotemporal wind gradient, allowing albatrosses to glide over vast distances. However, its use is challenging to demonstrate empirically and has yet to be confirmed in other seabirds. Here, we investigate how flap-gliding Manx shearwaters optimize their flight for dynamic soaring. We do so by deriving a new metric, the horizontal wind effectiveness, that quantifies how effectively flight harvests energy from a shear layer. We evaluate this metric empirically for fine-scale trajectories reconstructed from bird-borne video data using a simplified flight dynamics model. We find that the birds' undulations are phased with their horizontal turning to optimize energy harvesting. We also assess the opportunity for energy harvesting in longrange, GPS-logged foraging trajectories and find that Manx shearwaters optimize their flight to increase the opportunity for dynamic soaring during favorable wind conditions. Our results show how small-scale dynamic soaring affects large-scale Manx shearwater distribution at sea

Institutional Repository Universiteit Antwerpen

Optimization of dynamic soaring in a flap-gliding seabird affects its large-scale distribution at sea

Optimization of dynamic soaring in a flap-gliding seabird affects its large-scale distribution at sea

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Institutional Repository Universiteit Antwerpen