Near-surface wind variability over spatiotemporal scales relevant to plume tracking insects

Abstract

Odor plume tracking is an important biological process for many organisms, and flying insects have served as popular model systems for studying these behaviors both in the field and in lab settings. The shape and statistics of the airborne odor plumes that insects follow are largely governed by the wind that advects them. Prior atmospheric studies have investigated aspects of microscale wind patterns with an emphasis on characterizing pollution dispersion, enhancing weather prediction models, and for assessing wind energy potential. Here, we aim to characterize microscale wind dynamics through the lens of short-term ecological functions by focusing on spatial and temporal scales most relevant to an insect actively searching for an odor source. We collected and compared near-surface wind data across three distinct environments (sage steppe, forest, and urban) in locations across Northern Nevada. Our findings show that near-surface wind direction variability decreases with increasing wind speeds and increases in environments with greater surface complexity. Across environments, there is a strong correlation between the variability in wind speed (i.e. turbulence intensity) and wind direction (i.e. the standard deviation in wind direction). In some environments, the standard deviation in wind direction varied as much as 15{degrees} to 75{degrees} on time scales of 1-10 minutes. We draw insights between our findings and previous plume tracking experiments to provide a general intuition for future field research and guidance for wind tunnel experimental design. From our analyses, we hypothesize that there may be an ideal range of wind speeds and environment complexity in which insects will be most successful when tracking an odor plume to its source.