Related papers: Capturing the Continuous Complexity of Behavior in…
Animals flexibly recombine a finite set of core motor motifs to meet diverse task demands, but existing behavior segmentation methods oversimplify this process by imposing discrete syllables under restrictive generative assumptions. To…
We report on the effects of temporal modulation of the driving force on a particular class of localized states, known as worms, that have been observed in electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals. The worms consist of the superposition…
We illustrate shape mode analysis as a simple, yet powerful technique to concisely describe complex biological shapes and their dynamics. We characterize undulatory bending waves of beating flagella and reconstruct a limit cycle of…
A quantitative understanding of organism-level behavior requires predictive models that can capture the richness of behavioral phenotypes, yet are simple enough to connect with underlying mechanistic processes. Here we investigate the…
We experimentally studied the locomotion of the nematode C. elegans in both fluidic and granular media. In this fluid dynamics video, we show the motility gaits of the nematode in these two environments. The motility of the nematode C.…
Self-propelling organisms locomote via generation of patterns of self-deformation. Despite the diversity of body plans, internal actuation schemes and environments in limbless vertebrates and invertebrates, such organisms often use similar…
The physics of behavior seeks simple descriptions of animal behavior. The field has advanced rapidly by using techniques in low dimensional dynamics distilled from computer vision. Yet, we still do not generally understand the rules which…
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans responds to an impressive range of chemical, mechanical and thermal stimuli and is extensively used to investigate the molecular mechanisms that mediate chemosensation, mechanotransduction and…
We present what we believe to be the first formal verification of a biologically realistic (nonlinear ODE) model of a neural circuit in a multicellular organism: Tap Withdrawal (TW) in \emph{C. Elegans}, the common roundworm. TW is a…
Recent developments in automated tracking allow uninterrupted, high-resolution recording of animal trajectories, sometimes coupled with the identification of stereotyped changes of body pose or other behaviors of interest. Analysis and…
1. Movement is the primary means by which animals obtain resources and avoid hazards. Most movement exhibits directional bias that is related to environmental features (taxis), such as the location of food patches, predators, ocean…
Animals must integrate sensory cues with their current behavioral context to generate a suitable response. How this integration occurs is poorly understood. Previously we developed high throughput methods to probe neural activity in…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
In collective motion, perceptually-limited individuals move in an ordered manner, without centralized control. The perception of each individual is highly localized, as is its ability to interact with others. While natural collective motion…
Understanding principles of neurolocomotion requires the synthesis of neural activity, sensory feedback, and biomechanics. The nematode \textit{C. elegans} is an ideal model organism for studying locomotion in an integrated neuromechanical…
Neuronal networks provide living organisms with the ability to process information. They are also characterized by abundant recurrent connections, which give rise to strong feedback that dictates their dynamics and endows them with fading…
Many systems across the sciences evolve through a combination of multiplicative growth and diffusive transport. In the presence of disorder, these systems tend to form localized structures which alternate between long periods of relative…
Analysis of mathematical models in ecology and epidemiology often focuses on asymptotic dynamics, such as stable equilibria and periodic orbits. However, many systems exhibit long transient behaviors where certain aspects of the dynamics…
Mechanistic modelling of animal movement is often formulated in discrete time despite problems with scale invariance, such as handling irregularly timed observations. A natural solution is to formulate in continuous time, yet uptake of this…
We study the asymptotic properties of nearest-neighbor random walks in 1d random environment under the influence of an external field of intensity $\lambda\in\mathbb{R}$. For ergodic shift-invariant environments, we show that the limiting…