Flight of the Fruit Fly

What am I looking at?

This is an image of a tethered fruit fly in flight; it was created by compiling hundreds of images, each taken with an exposure time of about a hundredth of a second.  A fruit fly’s wingbeat frequency ranges from 200 to 250 beats per second, which means the wings of the fly pictured here went through the full cycle of the upstroke and downstroke while the camera shutter was open, resulting in the colorful motion blur you see here.

This technique makes it possible to see the range of motion of the fly’s wings (1 and 2), the position of its legs and body relative to its wings while it’s flying (3), and the pattern its wings make in the air to keep it aloft (4).

Biology in the background

The average person doesn’t spend much time thinking about the biological mechanisms that allow a fruit fly to become airborne and to maneuver while it’s in flight. However, these tiny insects are incredible flyers. They can beat their wings up to 200 times a second, they can change direction in the air almost instantaneously, they can reach speeds of up to one meter per second (an impressive rate considering their size), and they can stay airborne for up to three hours.

Images like these give us a glimpse of the aerodynamics that flies use to stay aloft and maneuver. This particular image was created to study the role of a protein called myosin in the muscle movements of fruit flies, which can provide insights into myosin-related diseases in humans, such as a heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

An adult fruit fly has a wingspan of about 15 millimeters, or roughly the width of a human thumbnail.

Technique

This image was created using macro videography.