Jumping performance of Locusta migratoria and relationship between jumping performance and ground roughness

Xiaojuan Mo; Wenjie Ge; Donato Romano; Elisa Donati; Cesare Stefanini; Paolo Dario

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.2877v1

Jumping performance of Locusta migratoria and relationship between jumping performance and ground roughness

Xiaojuan Mo¹, Wenjie Ge ¹, Donato Romano², Elisa Donati², Cesare Stefanini^2,3, Paolo Dario²

1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

2 The Biorobotics Institute, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University,, Abu Dhabi, UAE

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2877v1

Published: 2017-03-16
Accepted: 2017-03-16

Subject Areas: Animal Behavior, Mathematical Biology, Zoology
Keywords: jumping performance, simplified model, L.migratoria, surface roughness

Licence: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Cite this article: Mo X, Ge W, Romano D, Donati E, Stefanini C, Dario P. 2017. Jumping performance of Locusta migratoria and relationship between jumping performance and ground roughness. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2877v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2877v1

Abstract

Locusts are famous for its excellent jumping performance. Jumping helps locusts avoid predators and initiate flight. In this paper, high-speed videos are recorded to analyze the jumping performance of Locusta migratoria Linnaeus from ground with different roughness. By the established simplified theoretical model, we calculated L.migratoria normally can get 1.8318 m/s takeoff velocity and maximum acceleration about 66.72 m/s²with takeoff angle at about 36°. Locusts are prone to slip when jumping from smooth surface especially for locusts with only one leg. The analyzed results show that locusts can increase their takeoff acceleration to get bigger takeoff velocity to adapt to different terrains, and takeoff velocity has no connection with takeoff angle while bigger takeoff angle have the possibility to help locusts to jump successfully with only one leg left or from smooth surface.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.