Related papers: Do swimming animals mix the ocean?
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
Locomotion is essential for living cells. It enables bacteria and algae to explore space for food, cancer to spread, and immune system to fight infections. Motile cells display trajectories of intriguing complexity, from regular (e.g.…
The mechanisms underlying eco-evolutionary dynamics (the feedback between ecological and evolutionary processes) are often unknown. Here, we propose that classical theory from behavioral ecology can provide a greater understanding of the…
We consider a coupled atmosphere-ocean model, which involves hydrodynamics, thermodynamics and nonautonomous interaction at the air-sea interface. First, we show that the coupled atmosphere-ocean system is stable under the external…
Liquid water oceans are at the center of our search for life on exoplanets because water is a strict requirement for life as we know it. However, oceans are dynamic habitats---and some oceans may be better hosts for life than others. In…
The dynamic and thermal regimes of climate are regulated by an exchange of energy and momentum between the atmosphere and the ocean. The role exerted by surface waves on this interchange is particularly enigmatic. Waves induce turbulence in…
The complex formations exhibited by schooling fish have long been the object of fascination for biologists and physicists. However, the physical and sensory mechanisms leading to organized collective behavior remain elusive. On the physical…
One approach to quantifying biological diversity consists of characterizing the statistical distribution of specific properties of a taxonomic group or habitat. Microorganisms living in fluid environments, and for whom motility is key,…
Dynamical systems theory approach has been successfully used in physical oceanography for the last two decades to study mixing and transport of water masses in the ocean. The basic theoretical ideas have been borrowed from the phenomenon of…
Microorganisms such as bacteria often swim in fluid environments that cannot be classified as Newtonian. Many biological fluids contain polymers or other heterogeneities which may yield complex rheology. For a given set of boundary…
Marine plankton play a crucial role in carbon storage, oxygen production, global climate, and ecosystem function. Planktonic ecosystems are embedded in a Lagrangian patches of water that are continuously moving, stretching, and diluting.…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
Animals locomote for various reasons: to search for food, find suitable habitat, pursue prey, escape from predators, or seek a mate. The grand scale of biodiversity contributes to the great locomotory design and mode diversity. Various…
It is has been assumed for over half a century that the earliest animals were obligate aerobes with relatively high oxygen requirements. However, the conserved biochemistry and widespread phylogenetic distribution of anaerobic energy…
Study of the locomotion of a centipede (L. forficatus) at the air-water interface reveals that it does not predominantly use its 14 leg pairs to locomote; unlike most swimmers which propagate head-to-tail body bending waves, this species…
Undulatory locomotion is a means of self-propulsion that relies on the generation and propagation of waves along a body. As a mode of locomotion it is primitive and relatively simple, yet can be remarkably robust. No wonder then, that it is…
Communities of swimming microorganisms often thrive near liquid-air interfaces. We study how such `active carpets' shape their aquatic environment by driving biogenic transport in the water column beneath them. The hydrodynamic stirring…
The transport of heat and solutes by vertically migrating aggregations of plankton has long been explored as a potentially important source of ocean mixing. However, direct evidence of enhanced mixing due to these migrations remains…
Human activity has an enormous impact on Earth, changing organisms, environments and landscapes, leading to the decline of original ecosystems and irreversible changes that create new combinations of living beings and materials. As a…
Ice-covered ocean worlds possess diverse energy sources and associated mechanisms that are capable of driving significant seismic activity, but to date no measurements of their seismic activity have been obtained. Such investigations could…