Oscillations for active sensing in olfaction: bioinspiration from insect antennal movements

Abstract

Crustacean and insect antennal scanning movements have been postulated to increase odorant capture but the exact mechanisms as well as measures of efficiency are wanting. The aim of this work is to test the hypothesis that an increase in oscillation frequency of a simplified insect antenna model translates to an increase of odorant capture, and to quantify by how much and through which mechanism. We approximate the antennal movements of bumblebees, quantified in a previous study, by a vertical oscillatory movement of a cylinder in a homogeneous horizontal flow with odorants. We test our multiphysics flow and mass transfer numerical model with dedicated experiments using particle image velocimetry. A new entire translating experimental measurement setup containing an oil tank enables us to work at appropriate Strouhal and Reynolds numbers. Increasing antennal oscillating frequency does increase the odorant capture rate, up to 200%, proving this behavior being active sensing. This result holds however only up to a critical frequency. A decrease of efficiency characterizes higher frequencies, due to molecules depletion within oversampled regions, themselves defined by overlaying boundary layers. Despite decades of work on thermal and mass transfer studies on oscillating cylinders, no analogy with published cases was found. This is due to the unique flow regimes studied here, resulting from the combination of organ small size and low frequencies of oscillations. A theory for such flow regimes is thus to be developed, with applications to fundamental research on animal perception up to bioinspired olfaction.