In BMasinde/FlyingR: Simulation of Bird Flight Range

Introduction

In this tutorial, a sample of 28 birds from the program Flight is used to demonstrate how to use the package to estimate flight ranges of migrating birds. Note that in package FlyingR two approaches are implemented for this estimation. The first from @penny75 and the second from @penny03 and @penny08. In this tutorial focus is on the second approach (a time-marching approach).

Basic usage with default settings.

data("birds", package = "FlyingR")
results <-
  FlyingR::migrate(data = birds,
                  method = "cmm",
                  speed_control = 1,
                  min_energy_protein = 0.05)

# extract range as a vector
results$range

In this case, the muscle mass adjustment criteria is the constant muscle mass ("cmm", meaning protein is not consumed from muscle mass). Run by holding true airspeed at start of flight constant, the alternative is maintain the ratio between true airspeed and minimum power speed constant (speed_control = 0). In this simulation, additional protein is consumed (5\% of the total energy) and this comes from the airframe mass.

The default settings are as follows:

\begin{table}[H] \caption{Constants, denotation and default values} \label{constants} \begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|} \toprule \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\textbf{Constant}} & \textbf{denoted as} & \textbf{default value} \ \midrule Profile power constant & ppc & 8.40 \ \midrule Fat energy density & fed & 3.9E+07 \ \midrule gravity & g & 9.81 \ \midrule Mechanical conversion efficiency & mce & 0.23 \ \midrule Induced power factor & ipf & 1.20 \ \midrule Ventilation and circulation power & vcp & 1.10 \ \midrule Air density & airDensity & 1.00 \ \midrule Protein energy density & ped & 1.8E+07 \ \midrule Body drag coefficient & bdc & 0.10 \ \midrule %Basal metabolic rate & & \ \hline Mitochondria inverse power density & mipd & 1.2E-06 \ \midrule Muscle density & muscleDensity & 1060 \ \midrule Protein hydration ratio & phr & 2.2 \ \midrule Airspeed ratio & speedRatio & 1.2 \ \bottomrule \end{tabular} \end{table}

These settings could be adjusted. For example, the default value for the induced power factor is high, the recommended being 0.9. This can be adjusted as follows settings = list(ipf =0.9). Basic knowledge of defining lists is required.

results <-
  FlyingR::migrate(data = birds,
                  method = "cmm",
                  settings = list(ipf = 0.9),
                  speed_control = 1,
                  min_energy_protein = 0.05)

Other methods are the constant specific work (method = "csw") and constant specific power (method = "csp").

results <-
  FlyingR::migrate(data = birds,
                  method = "csw",
                  settings = list(ipf = 0.9),
                  speed_control = 1,
                  min_energy_protein = 0.05)


# obtain remaining body mass
results$bodyMass

# starting minimum power speed
results$startMinSpeed

# end of flight minimum power speed
results$endMinSpeed