... vertically above the water's surface, achieved through thrust produced by horizontal tail fluke oscillations. Strong, efficient propulsors are needed to generate the force required to support the dolphin's body weight, exhibiting chordwise and spanwise flexibility throughout the stroke cycle. To determine...

...Lauren A. Stanton; Eli S. Bridge; Joost Huizinga; Sarah Benson-Amram ABSTRACT Cognitive abilities, such as learning and flexibility, are hypothesized to aid behavioral adaptation to urbanization. Although growing evidence suggests that cognition may indeed facilitate persistence in urban...

... Farinatti , P. T. V. , Brandão , C. , Soares , P. P. S. and Duarte , A. F. A. ( 2011 ). Acute effects of stretching exercise on the heart rate variability in subjects with low flexibility levels . J. Strength Condition. Res.   25 , 1579 - 1585 . 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181e06ce1...

...Yi-Fen Lin; Nicolai Konow; Elizabeth R. Dumont ABSTRACT The interplay between morphological specialization and kinematic flexibility is important for organisms that move between habitats within different substrates. Burrowing is energetically expensive and requires substantial interaction with soil...

... fringes, and low stiffness and high elasticity when wet; it likely bends in the closed mouth when not used for filtration. Calculation of flexural modulus from stress/strain experiments shows that the balaenid baleen is slightly more flexible where it emerges from the gums and at its ventral terminus...

... a tensional modulus of the interray tissue. Thus, the biophysical values suggest that the flexibility of the fin during its hydrodynamic performance predominantly relies on the mechanical properties of the rays. * Author for correspondence ( [email protected] ) Competing interests The authors...

...Stéphane J. Montuelle; Rachel Olson; Hannah Curtis; JoAnna Sidote; Susan H. Williams ABSTRACT In mammals, chewing movements can be modified, or flexible, in response to changes in food properties. Variability between and within food in the temporal characteristics of chewing movements can impact...

...Sheng Liu; Shi-Jian Fu ABSTRACT Metabolism, behaviour and growth are highly flexible in fish species, and inter-individual variation in these traits is evolutionarily and ecologically significant. It has long been suggested that these traits co-vary, although their relationships are debated...

... of unrelated tadpoles on adult poison frogs triggers a cascade of parental behaviours involving tadpole transport and spatial memory use in both sexes, despite the asymmetric parental sex roles. Parental behaviour Behavioural trigger Flexibility Spatial cognition Tadpole transport Telemetry...

...Mark W. Denny; Felicia A. King ABSTRACT Flexibility is key to survival for seaweeds exposed to the extreme hydrodynamic environment of wave-washed rocky shores. This poses a problem for coralline algae, whose calcified cell walls make them rigid. Through the course of evolution, erect coralline...

... is more flexible than once thought, especially in response to colony or environmental perturbations. This great plasticity offers the intriguing possibility to disentangle the effect of age, behaviour and physiology on the ants’ abilities to cope with nutritional stresses. In this paper, we first looked...

...Stéphane J. Montuelle; Anthony Herrel; Paul-Antoine Libourel; Sandra Daillie; Vincent L. Bels SUMMARY Feeding movements are adjusted in response to food properties, and this flexibility is essential for omnivorous predators as food properties vary routinely. In most lizards, prey capture...

... by the A1β muscle. Analyses of flexibility (variability between behaviors) and coordination (correlation between bones within a behavior) indicate that motion of the maxillary bridge, not the lower jaw, drives premaxillary protrusion. Thus, upper jaw protrusion is decoupled from lower jaw depression...

...Megan C. Leftwich; Eric D. Tytell; Avis H. Cohen; Alexander J. Smits SUMMARY A robotic lamprey, based on the silver lamprey, Ichthyomyzon unicuspis , was used to investigate the influence of passive tail flexibility on the wake structure and thrust production during anguilliform swimming...

... of compliances used by this species, investigated how perch compliance (flexibility) affects the key jumping variables jump distance, takeoff duration, takeoff angle, takeoff speed and landing angle in A. carolinensis in the laboratory ( N =11). We observed that lizards lost contact with compliant horizontal...

.... * Author for correspondence ( [email protected] ) 5 10 2011 © 2012. 2012 fish caudal fin fin ray robotics biomimetics flexibility locomotion The caudal fin of fishes has often been viewed by engineers as a relatively simple propulsive surface that is flapped by fish...

... flexibility Fish routinely exhibit a level of agility that far surpasses the level that human-engineered underwater vehicles have been able to achieve ( Bandyopadhyay, 2002 ). Fish such as sunfish, perch and goldfish can hover, swim forwards and backwards, reorient and rotate in place, and do so...

... stereotypy flexibility fish feeding feeding behavior neuromotor control muscle-activity pattern sensorimotor system neuromechanics In most vertebrate classes, prey-processing behaviors determine the range of prey that a species can consume ( Liem, 1979 ). Like many activities, prey-processing...

... on acoustic communication( Hulse, 2002 ). bats echolocation adaptive vocal behavior flexibility call design auditory scene analysis conspecifics 2009 23 2 2009 * Author for correspondence (e-mail: [email protected] ) Several bat species, including R. hardwickei...

...Patrick T. Martone; Mark W. Denny SUMMARY Previous studies have demonstrated that fleshy seaweeds resist wave-induced drag forces in part by being flexible. Flexibility allows fronds to `go with the flow', reconfiguring into streamlined shapes and reducing frond area projected into flow...