Browsing by Author "Gruszewski, Hope A."

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    Vortex-induced dispersal of a plant pathogen by raindrop impact
    Kim, Seungho; Park, Hyunggon; Gruszewski, Hope A.; Schmale, David G. III; Jung, Sunghwan (NAS, 2019)
    Raindrop impact on infected plants can disperse micron-sized propagules of plant pathogens (e.g., spores of fungi). Little is known about the mechanism of how plant pathogens are liberated and transported due to raindrop impact.We used high-speed photography to observe thousands of dry-dispersed spores of the rust fungus Puccinia triticina being liberated from infected wheat plants following the impact of a single raindrop.We revealed that an air vortex ring was formed during the raindrop impact and carried the dry-dispersed spores away from the surface of the host plant. The maximum height and travel distance of the airborne spores increased with the aid of the air vortex. This unique mechanism of vortex-induced dispersal dynamics was characterized to predict trajectories of spores. Finally, we found that the spores transported by the air vortex can reach beyond the laminar boundary layer of leaves, which would enable the long-distance transport of plant pathogens through the atmosphere.
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    Wind Dispersal of Natural and Biomimetic Maple Samaras
    Nave, Gary K.; Hall, Nathaniel; Somers, Katrina; Davis, Brock; Gruszewski, Hope A.; Powers, Craig W.; Collver, Michael; Schmale, David G. III; Ross, Shane D. (MDPI, 2021-03-29)
    Maple trees (genus Acer) accomplish the task of distributing objects to a wide area by producing seeds, known as samaras, which are carried by the wind as they autorotate and slowly descend to the ground. With the goal of supporting engineering applications, such as gathering environmental data over a broad area, we developed 3D-printed artificial samaras. Here, we compare the behavior of both natural and artificial samaras in both still-air laboratory experiments and wind dispersal experiments in the field. We show that the artificial samaras are able to replicate (within one standard deviation) the behavior of natural samaras in a lab setting. We further use the notion of windage to compare dispersal behavior, and show that the natural samara has the highest mean windage, corresponding to the longest flights during both high wind and low wind experimental trials. This study demonstrated a bioinspired design for the dispersed deployment of sensors and provides a better understanding of wind-dispersal of both natural and artificial samaras.