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Adaptations to flow have already been in the focus of early stream research, but till today morphological adaptations of stream insects are hardly understood. While most previous stream research focused on drag, the effects of lift on ground-living stream insects have been often overlooked. Stream mayfly larvae Ecdyonurus sp. graze on algae on top of the stones and therefore inhabit current exposed places in streams. They have a dorso-ventrally flattened body shape, which is known to reduce drag. However, this body shape enhances lift too, increasing the danger for the animal of getting detached from the substrate. Using microscopic techniques, 3D-printing, and drag and lift measurements in a wind tunnel, our experiments show that the widened femora of Ecdyonurus sp. can generate negative lift, contributing to counterbalance the (positive) lift of the overall body shape. The larvae can actively regulate the amount of lift by adjusting the femur’s tilt or optimizing the distance to the ground. This shows that morphological adaptations of benthic stream insects can be very elaborate and can reach far beyond adaptations of the overall body shape. In the presented case, Ecdyonurus sp. takes advantage of the flow to overcome the flow’s challenges.

Abstract. The usage of unmanned underwater vehicles for marine tasks is continuously growing and bioinspired stabilizing systems shall help them to gain and keep a stable position during work. Therefore the righting maneuver of E. sinensis has been studied. These crabs are able to perform a 180• -rotation with an angular velocity of 4.30 s −1 when falling underwater from a supine starting position. High-speed particle image velocimetry has shown, that propulsive forces with a peak of 0.021 ± 0.001 N were produced by the hind legs to initiate and stop the rotation. In a numerical multibody simulation a constant force of 0.009 N acting for 0.2 s leads to the same rotation. In order to prove this mechanism, it was implemented into a robotic system. Its mean density of 1.15 g/cm 3 deviates not more than 4% from the biological and numerical models. It can complete a 180• -turn within 1.03 ± 0.12 s with a rotational velocity of up to 4.25 s −1 .

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