J0260104 フタモンアシナガバチの翅展開と離陸飛行に関する研究

抄録

Most of insects that walk about on the ground have structures to fold their wings. In this study, the take-off motion of a paper wasp, Polistes chinensis, was observed with a high-speed video camera system, and the unfolding sequence of the wings was investigated. A paper wasp with a body length of 13.8 mm was used. The wasp opened the folded wings and started flapping, and then the wing unfolding was completed at the third down stroke. The down stroke time decreased and upstroke time increased until each third stroke. Therefore, the initial several up and down strokes seem to be conducted to unfold the wings. The behavior of the vertical climbing flight following to the take-off was also investigated. The incline of the body to the horizontal was kept at around π/4 in the whole period of the vertical flight. Although the up and down stroke directions were almost parallel to the horizontal, the trajectories were different from each other. The trajectories of up and down strokes were convex upward and downward, respectively.