Related papers: Complex fluids in the animal kingdom

Flexible canopy flows are often encountered in natural scenarios, e.g., when crops sway in the wind or when submerged kelp forests are agitated by marine currents. Here, we provide a detailed characterisation of the turbulent flow developed…

What features characterise complex system dynamics? Power laws and scale invariance of fluctuations are often taken as the hallmarks of complexity, drawing on analogies with equilibrium critical phenomena[1-3]. Here we argue that slow,…

We derive from first principles a three-dimensional theory of self-propelled particle swarming in a viscous fluid environment. Our model predicts emergent collective behavior that depends critically on fluid opacity, mechanism of…

Competition between biological species in marine environments is affected by the motion of the surrounding fluid. An effective 2D compressibility can arise, for example, from the convergence and divergence of water masses at the depth at…

The spread of socially-learnt behaviours occurs in many animal species, and understanding how behaviours spread can provide novel insights into the causes and consequences of sociality. Within wild populations, behaviour spread is often…

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achieve collective…

Biological systems achieve precise control over ambient fluids through the self-organization of active protein structures including flagella, cilia, and cytoskeletal networks. In active structures individual proteins consume chemical energy…

The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…

I consider the many ways in which evolved information-flows are restricted and metabolic resources protected and hidden -- the thesis of living phenomena as evolutionary cryptosystems. I present the information theory of secrecy systems and…

Protein evolution underpins life, and understanding its behavior as a system is of great importance. However, our current models of protein evolution are arguably too simplistic to allow quantitative interpretation and prediction of…

Moving animal groups consist of many distinct individuals but can operate and function as one unit when performing different tasks. Effectively evading unexpected predator attacks is one primary task for many moving groups. The current…

Fire ants use their claws to grip diverse surfaces, including each other. As a result of their mutual adhesion and large numbers, ant colonies flow like inanimate fluids. In this sequence of films, we demonstrate how ants behave similarly…

This paper attempts to make feasible the evolutionary emergence of novelty in a supposedly deterministic world which behavior is associated with those of the mathematical dynamical systems. The work was motivated by the observation of…

Stochasticity plays important roles in reaction systems. Vector fields of probability flux and velocity characterize time-varying and steady-state properties of these systems, including high probability paths, barriers, checkpoints among…

There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…

The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…

Natural selection acts on traits at different scales, often with opposing consequences. This article identifies the particular forces that act at each scale and how those forces combine to determine the overall evolutionary outcome. A…

Incorporating the inherent heterogeneity of living systems into models of active nematics is essential to provide a more realistic description of biological processes such as bacterial growth, cell dynamics and tissue development.…

In a recent paper (Trefry et al., 2019) we showed that the interplay of aquifer heterogeneity and poroelasticity can produce complex transport in tidally forced aquifers, with significant implications for solute transport, mixing and…

The past few years have seen many advances in our understanding of the dynamics of polymeric fluids. These include improvements on the successful reptation theory; an emerging molecular theory of semiflexible chain dynamics; and an…