Characterisation and manipulation of urban light environments for fly control.

Diseases spread by flies can cause serious life-threatening illness in humans and other animals, increase absenteeism and reduce productivity. Fly control is therefore an important part of urban pest control. Current approaches to fly control use ultraviolet light to attract flies to a kill device. However, little is known about how flies respond to visual cues around human activity more broadly. Understanding urban fly visual ecology better could find novel approached to fly control and lead to the development of refined traps that improve attraction over longer ranges, are less intrusive to humans, and consume less energy.

This project aims to characterise urban visual environments from a fly's perspective, including aspects such as full-spectrum colour, polarisation and pattern. The student will be trained in imaging and visual system dependent modelling methods from visual ecology and use these to investigate the spatial and temporal structure of key urban environments. They will then experimentally manipulate key visual cues identified by this modelling work to investigate how flies respond at long and short ranges. The goal is to inspire better control technologies that effectively manipulate fly behaviour in urban environments.

Novel engineering challenges will include development of a model of fy vision and an imaging pipeline that will enable collection and quantification of the fly-perspective visual environment.