.... Almost all flights (>99%) were short flights lasting less than 10 s. Flight activity changed throughout the day and was highest in the morning and lowest in the early afternoon. Male pied flycatchers had lower wing loading than females, and in-flight accelerations were inversely correlated with wing...

... type, migration distance and fuel load from 213 European bird species and explored three questions: (1) does maximum fuel load relate to migration distance across species?; (2) does wing morphology, as described by wing aspect ratio and wing loading, influence maximum fuel load?; and (3) does flight...

... with altitude, although relative flight muscle mass remained constant. By contrast, maximum lifting capacity relative to body weight declined over the same elevational range, while the effective wing loading in flight (i.e. the ratio of body weight and maximum lifted weight to total wing area) remained constant...

... of the kinetic and potential energies of the centre of mass. Individuals with a lower wing loading, WL (WL=body weight/wing area) had higher escape take-off performance, consistent with the increase in lift production expected from relatively larger wings. Unexpectedly, it was found that the total power...

... and wing loading) among three species of lizards,representing a range of aerial descenders present within the clade. Our performance measurements show that the lacertid Holaspis guentheri performs intermediately to the specialized gekkonid Ptychozoon kuhli and the rock-dwelling lizard Podarcis muralis...

...-reared flies performed equally well. We also compared several traits in cold- and warm-developing flies to determine if cold-developing flies had better flight performance at cold temperatures due to changes in body mass, wing length, wing loading, relative flight muscle mass or wing-beat frequency...

... by variation in wing loading, after corrections for body mass and phylogeny. The correlated evolution of mass-specific metabolic rate, wingbeat frequency and wing loading was also revealed after correcting for phylogeny and body mass. Further, the effect of body size on flight energetics can be understood...

...C. Hambly; E. J. Harper; J. R. Speakman SUMMARY The effect of experimentally increased wing loading on the energy cost of flight was examined in cockatiels Nyphicus hollandicus . Five individuals were flown for periods of approximately 2 min, while carrying additional payload mass amounting...

... for a male bat). The highest three of these masses incorporated artificial loads. Stroboscopic stereophotogrammetry was used to make three-dimensional reconstructions ( n =124) of the bats’ flight paths. Over the entire range of experiments, wing loading was increased by 44% for the female and 46...

... · 14-7·02×10 –4 g for aphids vs 3·3-8·0x 10 –5 g for whiteflies) and to have significantly larger wing surface areas (range 0·0103–0·1106 cm 2 vs 0·0096-0·0264cm 2 ). As a consequence whiteflies and aphids can be partitioned into two groups with respect to wing loading (range 0·00633-0·01412 g cm –2...

... between taxonomic groups (54–63 N kg −1 ), except for animals using clap-and-fling wingbeats, where muscle mass-specific lift increased by about 25 % (72–86 N kg −1 ). Muscle mass-specific lift was independent of body mass, wing loading, disk loading and aspect ratio. Birds and bats yielded results...