Temperature is one of the most important variables affecting an animal’s physiology. Animal’s thermoregulate in a variety of ways from behaviorally seeking out warmer or cooler parts of their habitat to having extensive heat exchange strategies in their circulatory systems. Large moths like Manduca sexta typically spend the first moments before flight performing a behavior […]
The established perspective of flight control in insects holds that their remarkable maneuverability arises from neural modulation of relatively small steering muscles acting in concert with the regular, clock-like activation of larger power muscles. Yet the power output of these main muscles is very sensitive to subtle timing changes in neural activation. To test if […]
How big were ancient whales?Body size is perhaps the most obvious functionally important feature of an organism, yet it is complexly determined by many genes and environmental factors. Understanding body size trends through time and correlations with evolutionary transitions and ecology can give insight into characteristics of the process of evolution itself. Body size has […]
In the previous project we altered the commands the cockroach’s brain was sending to its muscle in real-time while the animal was running or maintaining its posture. We found that the same muscle could have three different function even when activated by the same commands. These differences seemed to arise for the mechanical context in […]
What is the potential of a particular muscle to control locomotion and how does mechanics affect the control consequences of neural feedback to a muscle?Electrophysiological recordings of nerves and muscles during perturbations do not address how particular motor activation patterns control locomotion since many muscles can change in parallel and each can act in unexpected […]
Even geckos encounter perturbations and environments that can challenge their ability to stick. The hairs of a gecko’s foot are composed of dry, hard keratin. Classic physics predicts dry, hard solids to have frictional forces that decrease at the onset of sliding (kinetic friction is less than static friction). We discovered that gecko adhesives actually […]
Animals must sense their environment in order to navigate. American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana L.) in the natural world often face navigation challenges in cluttered, low-light environments. To supplement their vision, they use their antenna as tactile probes. They can track surfaces with their long antennae by letting the antenna bend against the surface and rapidly […]
We tested whether mechanical stabilization strategies without external sensing can yield successful locomotion in a challenging environment. In this study, we ran cockroaches (Blaberus discoidalis) over a highly complex terrain with obstacles up to three times cockroach hip height to repeatedly perturb body dynamics. Cockroaches provide excellent systems for neuromechanical experiments because they are experimentally robust and […]
Why back when Simon was an undergraduate at Lewis & Clark College his first experience with the research in biomechanics was working with Prof. Kellar Autumn (visit him here!) to figure out how geckos stick. It turns out that gecko feet are covered in millions of tiny hairs called setae. Each of these hairs branches […]
