Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. Current
Biology, Volume 23, Issue 3, R102-R103, 4 February 2013
CorrespondenceAdd/View Comments (0) Adaptive aerial righting
during the escape dropping of wingless pea aphidsCorresponding
author # Contributed equally to this work - Pea aphids
(Acyrthosiphon pisum) are small sap-sucking insects that live on
plants in colonies containing mostly wingless individuals. They
often escape predators, parasitoids and grazing mammalian
herbivores by dropping off the plant [1,2], avoiding immediate
danger but exposing themselves to ground predators, starvation
and desiccation . We show here that dropping pea aphids land on
their legs, regardless of their initial orientation on the plant
(like a defenestrated cat), by rotating their body during the
fall. This righting ability is intriguing, as wingless aphids
have no specialized structures for maneuvering in mid-air.
Instead, they assume a stereotypic posture which is
aerodynamically stable only when the aphids fall righ