Publications related to Insect

A Biohybrid Superorganism - Investigating honeybees' collective behaviors via interactive robotics

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where the collaborative efforts of "simple" individuals can lead to the emergence of complex dynamics. The reliance of each organism on the collective is so great t ...

EPFL2024

Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies

Francesco Mondada, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak, Raphael Cherfan

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where collaboration and division of labor enhance survival of the whole colony, and are thus considered “superorganisms”. Historically, studying behaviors involving ...

2024

Targeted worker removal reveals a lack of flexibility in brood transport specialisation with no compensatory gain in efficiency

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Laurent Keller, Fazil Emre Uslu

Division of labour is widely thought to increase the task efficiency of eusocial insects. Workers can switch their task to compensate for sudden changes in demand, providing flexible task allocation. In combination with automated tracking technology, we de ...

Nature Research2024

An Autonomous Robotic Platform to Manipulate Collective Behavior in Ants

Matthias Rüegg

Eusocial life is characterized by division of labour, collective decision making and self organization, and regarded as the highest form of social organisation in groups. Ants are a model organism for research in collective behavior and the evolution of eu ...

EPFL2023

Robotic manipulation to investigate the physical principles of biological self-organization

Fazil Emre Uslu

Self-organization is the spontaneous formation of ordered patterns and networks from a population of comparatively simple elements or individuals with no prior information on neither the formation process nor the final organization. While the construction ...

EPFL2022

Mechanistic Understanding of Neurobehavioral Effects of Insecticides on the Larvae of Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Sarah-Katharina Könemann

Due to conservation of neuronal functioning across phyla, molecular targets of insecticides are similar in insects and vertebrates. Insecticides thus pose a risk to aquatic vertebrates, such as fish, and potentially cause neurotoxic effects. Although these ...

EPFL2022

Growth, timing, & trajectory of vortices behind a rotating plate

Diego Francescangeli

The presence of aerodynamic vortices is widespread in nature. They can be found at small scales near the wing tip of flying insects or at bigger scale in the form of hurricanes, cyclones or even galaxies. They are identified as coherent regions of high vor ...

EPFL2022

Cecropins contribute to Drosophila host defense against a subset of fungal and Gram-negative bacterial infection

Bruno Lemaitre, Mark Austin Hanson, Alexia Laurie Carboni

Cecropins are small helical secreted peptides with antimicrobial activity that are widely distributed among insects. Genes encoding Cecropins are strongly induced upon infection, pointing to their role in host defense. In Drosophila, four cecropin genes cl ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC2022

Rapid molecular evolution of Spiroplasma symbionts of Drosophila

Bruno Lemaitre, Florent François Masson

Spiroplasma is a genus of Mollicutes whose members include plant pathogens, insect pathogens and endosymbionts of animals. Spiroplasma phenotypes have been repeatedly observed to be spontaneously lost in Drosophila cultures, and several studies have docume ...

2021

Dual proteomics of Drosophila melanogaster hemolymph infected with the heritable endosymbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii

Bruno Lemaitre, Samuel Rommelaere, Fanny Schüpfer, Florent François Masson, Alice Marra

Insects are frequently infected with heritable bacterial endosymbionts. Endosymbionts have a dramatic impact on their host physiology and evolution. Their tissue distribution is variable with some species being housed intracellularly, some extracellularly ...

2021

Transformation of the Drosophila Sex-Manipulative Endosymbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii and Persisting Hurdles for Functional Genetic Studies

Bruno Lemaitre, Chloé Christiane Laurence Jollivet, Florent François Masson

Insects are frequently infected by bacterial symbionts that greatly affect their physiology and ecology. Most of these endosymbionts are, however, barely tractable outside their native host, rendering functional genetics studies difficult or impossible. Sp ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2020

Role of Nimrod receptors in the Drosophila melanogaster cellular immune response

Claudia Melcarne

The use of modern molecular biology tools and simple but powerful tractable model organisms such as Drosophila has contributed significantly to our recent advances in the innate immunity field, notably phagocytosis. Since 2001, many phagocytic transmembran ...

EPFL2020

Deformation of porous flexible strip in low and moderate Reynolds number flows

François Gallaire, Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Matteo Pezzulla

We present results from a combined experimental and numerical investigation of the fluid-structure interaction of cantilevered porous flexible strips, towed through a fluid bath. We characterize the steady-state deformation of the strips and their associat ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2020

The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments

Dario Floreano, Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur, Emily Baird

Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnit ...

Nature Research2019

Insect-Inspired Visual Perception for Flight Control and Collision Avoidance

Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur

Flying robots are increasingly used for tasks such as aerial mapping, fast exploration, video footage and monitoring of buildings. Autonomous flight at low altitude in cluttered and unknown environments is an active research topic because it poses challen ...

EPFL2019

Device and method for sorting biological entities

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Norbert Crot, Marcin Antoni Sylwestrzak

A device for sorting biological entities is disclosed. The device comprises a channel to canalize the biological entities and a selector having slots to accommodate said entities. Means for detecting and analysing an optical parameter of the biological ent ...

2019

Eco-friendly pesticide based on peppermint oil nanoemulsion: preparation, physicochemical properties, and its aphicidal activity against cotton aphid

Amirmostafa Amirjani

Using organic insecticides including plant oils, it is possible to design a new perspective for the control of insect pests. In this research, nanoemulsion formulations of Mentha piperita, wild-type essential oil (EO) were prepared utilizing high-energy ul ...

2020

Two Nimrod receptors, NimC1 and Eater, synergistically contribute to bacterial phagocytosis in Drosophila melanogaster

Bruno Lemaitre, Jan Paul Dudzic, Elodie Julie Virginie Ramond, Andrew Jonathan Bretscher, Claudia Melcarne

Eater and NimC1 are transmembrane receptors of the Drosophila Nimrod family, specifically expressed in haemocytes, the insect blood cells. Previous ex vivo and in vivoRNAi studies have pointed to their role in the phagocytosis of bacteria. Here, we have cr ...

2019

Weevil pgrp-lb prevents endosymbiont TCT dissemination and chronic host systemic immune activation

Florent François Masson, João Pedro Alves Da Silva

Long-term intracellular symbiosis (or endosymbiosis) is widely distributed across invertebrates and is recognized as a major driving force in evolution. However, the maintenance of immune homeostasis in organisms chronically infected with mutualistic bacte ...

National Academy of Sciences2019

Bioinspired dual-stiffness origami

Dario Floreano, Stefano Mintchev, Jun Shintake

Origami manufacturing has led to considerable advances in the field of foldable structures with innovative applications in robotics, aerospace, and metamaterials. However, existing origami are either load-bearing structures that are prone to tear and fail ...

2018