Using a wind tunnel built over a shallow pool and methods devised for measuring the performance of yacht sails, I describe aerodynamic performance in situ for the sailor-by-the-wind, Velella velella. By contrast with designers of the modern yacht mainsail, natural selection has apparently favored stability and seaworthiness over performance to windward. The Velella sail is a low aspect ratio airfoil with an unusually flat polar plot. Primarily a drag-based locomotory structure, this thin, leaf-like sail generates maximum force when oriented at attack angles between 50° and 90°. In the wind tunnel, free-sailing animals spontaneously assumed stable orientations at attack angles ranging from 28° to 87° and sailed with their hulls approximately broadside to the apparent flow of oncoming water. At these angles, aerodynamic force on the sail is asymmetrical, with the center of pressure upwind of the sail midline. Since aerodynamic force on the sail is balanced at equilibrium by hydrodynamic force on the hull, this orientation must be caused by asymmetrical forces acting on surface and underwater parts as the wind drags the animal along the surface of the water.
In the field: an interview with Sönke Johnsen
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Sönke Johnsen is a Professor at Duke University, USA, investigating visual ecology and he talks about his experiences of collecting transparent animals while blue water diving and in a submersible, as well as outrunning Hurricane Katrina.
Call for new preLighters
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preLights is the preprint highlighting community supported by The Company of Biologists. At the heart of preLights are our preLighters: early-career researchers who select and write about interesting new preprints for the research community. We are currently looking for new preLighters to join our team. Find out more and apply here.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology
Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.
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