BIOMECHANICS, AERODYNAMICS AND THERMAL BALANCE IN THE FLIGHT OF HUMMINGBIRDS

Flathead Audubon will present an online program on Monday, October 12 at 7 PM. Dr. Bret Tobalske, Professor of Organismal Biology, Ecology and Evolution in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana an is Director of the Field Research Station at Fort Missoula. He will explore the diverse aspects of the hummingbird’s biological form and function that facilitate their prowess in flight.
Hummingbirds are unique among birds in converging upon the capacity of insects for indefinite hovering and remarkable maneuvering during flight. They also are adept at forward flight and some species migrate. The flight performance of hummingbirds represents an extreme with limits imposed by evolution as a vertebrate and it provides a useful model for the development of bioinspired, autonomous flying vehicles.
Dr.Tobalske received his PhD at the University of Montana in 1994 and pursued post-doctoral work at Harvard University. He was on the faculty of the University of Portland in Oregon from 1999-2008 whereupon he returned to the University of Montana. As a comparative biomechanist, he explores how the form and function of organisms has evolved in relation
to the attributes of the physical world. Most of his research explores avian flight, but he has diverse interests that are united by fundamental questions about fluid dynamics and the effects of body size including, for example, the costs and uses of sexually-selected
weapons in beetles and the evolution of polar gigantism in sea spiders.
The program is free and open to the public.

The October 12 FAS meeting will be available to all electronically, via Zoom. To join the meeting insert the following meeting link into the address bar of your browser and hit enter, or go directly by clicking on the meeting link. The meeting link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81026781002. If this is the first time you’ve used Zoom it may take a few minutes to load the program on your computer (and you’ll likely need to give it permission to load the program). Use your computer’s audio (preferred), or get the audio by
phone: +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma), 810 2678 1002#
You should eventually be let into a “waiting room” where you will then be added to the meeting by the host. Please sign in with your name when they enter the room so we know to admit you. You will be muted when you first join the meeting. You can use
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You can also get an audio connection to the meeting without the Zoom visual capability by using
the above phone number and passcode