相关论文: Formation and mechanics of fire ant rafts as an ac…

Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) cohesively aggregate via the formation of voluntary ant-to-ant attachments when under confinement or exposed to water. Once formed, these aggregations act as viscoelastic solids due to dynamic bond exchange…

Condensed active matter is exemplary for its capacity to morph and exhibit internal flows despite remaining cohered. To facilitate understanding of this ability, we investigate the cause of finger-like protrusions that emerge from…

Membrane-mediated particle interactions depend both on the properties of the particles themselves and the membrane environment in which they are suspended. Experiments have shown that chiral rod-like inclusions dissolved in a colloidal…

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…

In this work we studied the trajectories, velocities and densities of ants when egressing under controlled levels of stress produced by a chemical repellent at different concentrations. We found that, unlike other animals escaping under…

Locomotion emerges from effective interactions of an individual with its environment. Principles of biological terrestrial locomotion have been discovered on unconfined vertical and horizontal substrates. However a diversity of organisms…

Using a simple model for the trail formation of ants, the relation between i)the schedule of feeding which represents the unsteady natural environment, ii)emerging patterns of trails connecting a nest with food resources, and iii)the…

A rigid cylinder placed on a soft gel deforms its surface. When multiple cylinders are placed on the surface, they interact with each other via the topography of the deformed gel which serves as an energy landscape; as they move, the…

We consider a continuous mathematical description of a population of ants and simulate numerically their foraging behavior using a system of partial differential equations of chemotaxis type. We show that this system accurately reproduces…

A particle raft floating on an expanding liquid substrate provides a macroscopic analog for studying material failure. The time scales in this system allow both particle-relaxation dynamics and rift formation to be resolved. In our…

The relaxation of uni-axially compressed particle rafts through a finite opening found at the opposite side is experimentally studied. Three main behaviours are identified. The lowest relaxation degree corresponds to local unjamming. The…

Lipid rafts are hypothesized to facilitate protein interaction, tension regulation, and trafficking in biological membranes, but the mechanisms responsible for their formation and maintenance are not clear. Insights into many other…

Colloidal membranes are monolayer assemblies of rodlike particles that capture the long-wavelength properties of lipid bilayer membranes on the colloidal scale. Recent experiments on colloidal membranes formed by chiral rodlike viruses…

Collective motion by animal groups is affected by internal interactions, external constraints and the influx of information. A quantitative understanding of how these different factors give rise to different modes of collective motion is,…

We study the collective behaviour of a close packed monolayer of non-Brownian particles at a fluid-liquid interface. Such a particle raft forms a two-dimensional elastic solid and can support anisotropic stresses and strains, e.g. it…

The effect of air viscosity on the flow around an insect wing increases as insect size decreases. For the smallest insects (wing length R below 1 mm), the viscous effect is so large that lift-generation mechanisms used by their larger…

A finite simple shear deformation of an elastic solid induces unequal normal stresses. This nonlinear phenomenon, known as the Poynting effect, is governed by a universal relation between shear strain and first normal stresses difference,…

Efficient transportation, a hot topic in nonlinear science, is essential for modern societies and the survival of biological species. Biological evolution has generated a rich variety of successful solutions, which have inspired engineers…

In this study, we synthesize a novel dynamical approach for ant colonies enabling them to migrate to new nest sites in a self-organizing fashion. In other words, we realize ant colony migration as a self-organizing phenotype-level…

We experimentally study the unjamming dynamics of strongly compressed particle rafts confined between two fixed walls and two movable barriers. The back barrier is made of an elastic band, whose deflection indicates the local stress. The…