Related papers: Size and shape of terrestrial animals
Most animals possess the ability to actuate a vast diversity of movements, ostensibly constrained only by morphology and physics. In practice, however, a frequent assumption in behavioral science is that most of an animal's activities can…
What are the general principles that allow proper growth of a tissue or an organ? A growing leaf is an example of such a system: it increases its area by orders of magnitude, maintaining a proper (usually flat) shape. How can this be…
In this paper we study crawling locomotion based on directional frictional interactions, namely, frictional forces that are sensitive to the sign of the sliding velocity. Surface interactions of this type are common in biology, where they…
In this letter, we investigate the geometrically tailorable elasticity in the twisting behavior of biomimetic scale-covered slender soft substrate. Motivated by our qualitative experiments showing a significant torsional rigidity increase,…
Novel numerical techniques, validated by an analysis of barnase and chymotrypsin inhibitor, are used to elucidate the paramount role played by the geometry of the protein backbone in steering the folding to the correct native state. It is…
We investigate how localized inhomogeneity affects the geometry and stability of migratory bird formations. We use a lifting-line model with a horseshoe-vortex representation to describe the longitudinal dynamics of aerodynamic…
In this paper, we consider a generalization of the elephant random walk model. Compared to the usual elephant random walk, an interesting feature of this model is that the step sizes form a sequence of positive independent and identically…
The meridional component of the earth's rotation is often neglected in geophysical contexts. This is referred to as the `traditional approximation' and is justified by the typically small vertical velocity and aspect ratio of such problems.…
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,…
Biological patterns generated during development and regeneration often scale with organism size. Some organisms, e.g., flatworms, can regenerate a rescaled body plan from tissue fragments of varying sizes. Inspired by these examples, we…
Avalanche behavior of gravitationally-forced granular layers on a rough inclined plane are investigated experimentally for different materials and for a variety of grain shapes ranging from spherical beads to highly anisotropic particles…
Bipedal animals have diverse morphologies and advanced locomotion abilities. Terrestrial birds, in particular, display agile, efficient, and robust running motion, in which they exploit the interplay between the body segment masses and…
Controversy exists regarding whether grain morphology reduces or enhances the drag of a single grain in creeping flows; further complication occurs when orientation dependence for aspherical grains comes into play. To quantify influences of…
Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…
The capacity for aerial maneuvering shaped the evolution of flying animals. Here we evaluate consequences of aviaian morphology for aerial performance (1,2) by quantifying static stability and control effectiveness of physical models (3)…
Mathematical modelling of the evolution of the size-spectrum dynamics in aquatic ecosystems was discovered to be a powerful tool to have a deeper insight into impacts of human- and environmental driven changes on the marine ecosystem. In…
In evolution theory the concept of a fitness landscape has played an important role, evolution itself being portrayed as a hill-climbing process on a rugged landscape. In this article it is shown that in general, in the presence of other…
In population dynamics, mathematical models often contain too many parameters to be easily testable. A way to reliably estimate parameters for a broad range of systems would help us obtain clearer predictions from theory. In this paper, we…
Epistasis occurs when the effect of a mutation depends on its carrier's genetic background. Despite increasing evidence that epistasis for fitness is common, its role during evolution is contentious. Fitness landscapes, mappings of genotype…
We investigate the movement patterns of three different Neotropical marsupials in an unfamiliar and risky environment. Animals are released in a matrix from which they try to reach a patch of forest. Their movements, performed on a small…