- 1.
The vertical lift forces generated by the legs of Nymphon while swimming at constant depth have been estimated graphically using drag constants determined by a sedimentation method. Drag both normal and tangential to the different segments of the leg has been considered.
- 2.
When holding station Nymphon characteristically employs a low elevation beat in which the upward force produced during the power stroke of each leg only just exceeds the predominantly downward force generated during the recovery. An upward lift component is also produced late during the recovery stroke.
- 3.
The legs beat in a vertical plane and an investigation of the moments at the joints of the leg suggests that much of the power stroke is gravity assisted.
- 4.
The upward lift produced by all eight legs agreed fairly well on average with the sinking force due to the animal's weight in water, and the vertical lift fluctuates rhythmically throughout the leg beat cycle. The relationship between the swimming gait and the amplitude of these fluctuations has been investigated. During the gait most frequently used by the animal fluctuations in vertical lift were found to be minimal.
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz
Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
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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