Butterfly Wind Tunnel Research

For the next month, look through the large glass windows into Reiman Gardens’ butterfly laboratory, and you’ll see a researcher working with butterflies in a large, clear rectangular wind tunnel on a table.

The researcher is Rhea von Busse, a visiting scholar at Iowa State University, who is studying butterfly flight. During business hours Monday through Thursday, you’ll see her at work, putting butterflies into the tunnel and taking high-quality fast motion-capture videos of the butterflies. Some days, you may even see her inside the tunnel, working with the butterflies!