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First published online December 14, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 210, 82-90 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02612

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Analyzing the effect of wind on flight: pitfalls and solutions

Judy Shamoun-Baranes^1,*, Emiel van Loon¹, Felix Liechti² and Willem Bouten¹

¹ Computational Biogeography and Physical Geography, Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
² Swiss Ornithological Institute, 6204 Sempach, Switzerland

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: shamoun{at}science.uva.nl)

Accepted 19 October 2006

How flying organisms alter their air speed in response to wind is important in theories of flight energetics. Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between air and wind as a function of ground speed and air speed. This study shows that this approach can lead to erroneous results, due to spurious correlations. An alternative way to analyze air speed is proposed that overcomes the problems of one-dimensional linear models. The new model is non-linear and has two explanatory variables. Using two synthetic data sets with known properties and a data set with real observations of migratory bird tracks and wind observations, we illustrate the weaknesses of the conventional analysis as well as the strengths of the newly proposed model. This leads to the conclusion that for many studies a reanalysis of the effect of wind on air speed is desirable.

Key words: compensation, flight, model, spurious correlation, wind

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