Reconstructing the flight kinematics of swarming and mating in wild mosquitoes

by Sachit Butail, Nicholas Manoukis, Moussa Diallo, José M. Ribeiro, Tovi Lehmann, and Derek A. Paley

InterfaceVolume 9(75):2624-2638

October 7, 2012

©2012 by The Royal Society

The pair of images above are magnified and enhanced versions of raw footage obtained from the authors' fieldwork in Mali.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Block-diagram of the mosquito tracking system.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Top-down view of the (a) position and (b) velocity likelihood functions on a plane orthogonal to the image and parallel to the camera axis.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

(a) Two-dimensional projection of a 1 cm sphere tracing the interpolated path of a mosquito.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Four examples of occlusion resolution by soft-clustering the occluded blobs into two individual mosquito streaks.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

The data collection system consists of the stereo camera rig and a laptop powered by an uninterrupted power supply (UPS).

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

(a) Position (dashed blue) and cardinality error (solid green) for a swarm of 10 mosquitoes.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

GPS measurements of filming locations in Mali, Africa ©2012 Google, ©2012 DigitalGlobe.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Instantaneous three-dimensional (a) position and (b) velocity tracks of a male mosquito (black solid) in the Aug. 29 sequence (S molecular form).

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Instantaneous horizontal versus vertical speed of male mosquitoes in six sequences (black dots).

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Instantaneous three-dimensional (a) position and (b) velocity of a female mosquito that coupled in the Aug. 29 sequence, filmed 70 s after the male position and velocity shown in figure 9.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Three-dimensional reconstruction of A. gambiae mating events in the wild.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society

Relative distance (a) and speeds (b) of mating male and female A. gambiae mosquitoes in six mating sequences.

Sachit Butail et al. J. R. Soc. Interface 2012;9:2624-2638

©2012 by The Royal Society