Functional characteristics of the rigid elytra in a bamboo weevil beetle Cyrtotrachelus buqueti

Abstract

The bamboo weevil beetle, Cyrtotrachelus buqueti, has evolved a particular flight pattern. When crawling, the beetle folds the flexible hind wings and stuffs under the rigid elytra. During flight, the hind wings are deployed through a series of deployment joints that are passively driven by flapping forces. When the hind wings are fully expanded, the unfolding joint realises self-locking. At this time, the hind wings act as a folded wing membrane and flap simultaneously with the elytra to generate aerodynamics. The functional characteristics of the elytra of the bamboo weevil beetle were investigated, including microscopic morphology, kinematic properties and aerodynamic forces of the elytra. In particular, the flapping kinematics of the elytra were measured using high-speed cameras and reconstructed using a modified direct linear transformation algorithm. Although the elytra are passively flapped by the flapping of the hind wings, the analysis shows that its flapping wing trajectory is a double figure-eight pattern with flapping amplitude and angle of attack. The results show that the passive flapping of elytra produces aerodynamic forces that cannot be ignored. The kinematics of the elytra suggest that this beetle may use well-known flapping mechanisms such as a delayed stall and clap and fling. K E Y W O R D S3D reverse reconstruction, aerodynamic force, bio-inspired structures, microstructure, wing kinematicsThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Numerical Simulations of the Effect of the Asymmetrical Bending of the Hindwings of a Hovering C. buqueti Bamboo Weevil with Respect to the Aerodynamic Characteristics

“…The chemical treatment process of the hindwings before 3D scanning is outlined in refs. [36,37]. Unlike the previous scanning method [36,37], the scanner here is orthogonal to the dorsal side of the hindwing, which is determined by the distribution of convex veins in the vein's venation.…”

“…[36,37]. Unlike the previous scanning method [36,37], the scanner here is orthogonal to the dorsal side of the hindwing, which is determined by the distribution of convex veins in the vein's venation. In addition, gradual scanning is performed from the wing root to the wing tip due to the fact that many noise points will be generated at the beginning of the procedure, and point cloud data at the wing root can be greatly simplified with the inverse modeling without affecting any subsequent simulation results.…”

“…The flow field around the wings of the Drosophila robot [43] was simulated to verify the accuracy of the CFD solver used in our previous work [37]. The flapping-wing kinematic data were derived from the experimental results.…”

The Potential Distribution Prediction of the Forestry Pest Cyrtotrachelus buqueti (Guer) Based on the MaxEnt Model across China

“…While crawling on the ground, they can fold them and tuck them under their hard forewings, serving as a protective measure. Particularly notable is the intricate venation structure of the hindwings, allowing them to fully expand during flight and achieve joint self-locking [13]. This structure enables them to control yaw direction during flight, allowing for agile movement within dense bamboo forests [14].…”