Active hearing processes in mosquitoes: from mesoscopic to macroscopic models
- When?
- Friday 25 March 2011, 16:00 to 17:00
- Where?
- 24AA04
- Open to:
- Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Daniele Avitabile (Surrey)
Abstract: Insects have evolved diverse and delicate morphological structures in order to capture the inherently low energy of a propagating sound wave. In mosquitoes, the capture of acoustic energy, and its transduction into neuronal signals, is assisted by the active mechanical participation of the scolopidia.
In this talk I will present a mesoscopic mechanistic model of the active amplification in the mosquito species "Toxorhynchites brevipalpis". The model is based on the description of the antenna as a forced-damped oscillator coupled to a set of active threads (ensembles of scolopidia) that provide an impulsive force when they twitch.
I will then show preliminary results obtained with a macroscopic version of the model, in which the impulsive forces exerted by the threads are homogenised and the resulting mechanical nonlinearity sustains the antennal motion.