The Insect Biomechanics Group

How do animals and plants function mechanically?

Our research aims to explain how animals function and how they are adapted biomechanically for their environments. We investigate how animals attach themselves to the substrate to allow locomotion, as well as the ecological context of attachment mechanisms in a wide range of insect-plant interactions.

Using animals from diverse groups (including insect adults and larvae, arachnids, and gastropods), we study how their attachment systems are designed to solve the conflict between adhesion and locomotion, and what adaptations they have evolved to cope with challenging natural substrates. We study several insect-plant interactions where mechanical factors play a dominant role (including mutualism in Macaranga-ant associations, carnivory in Nepenthes pitcher plants, herbivory in caterpillars, and foraging in leafcutter ants). Apart from field work (mainly in tropical Southeast Asia), our experimental methods and techniques include force measurements at different size scales, morphometry, interference, confocal, and electron microscopy, and high-speed 3D motion analysis.