Integrative and Comparative Biology最新文献

Bio-inspired design has become a significant driver of innovation, enabling the development of effective solutions to some of the world's toughest challenges. Bio-inspired design leverages evolutionary advancements to create products and processes that are often more efficient and sustainable. However, applying biological insights to engineering can be challenging due to the distinct ways the two disciplines define and interpret core concepts. This paper explores the cognitive and technical skills required to effectively translate biological inspiration into engineering solutions. Our hypothesis focuses on bridging the "language and representation gap" between biology and engineering. The goal of this paper is to identify key aspects of biological representation that enable its successful adaptation into engineering design, fostering the development of more impactful and efficient bio-inspired solutions. The analysis of student feedback and ideation outputs revealed that engineers preferred biology texts with a medium level of technical complexity, balancing ease of understanding with image quantity. Basic references were found to support diverse idea generation, while more technical texts proved useful and necessary for understanding in-depth biological insights and applying them to engineering problems. Future research could explore the impact of information presentation order, the role of biological experts in deepening insights, and the use of machine learning to refine how biological information is selected and categorized to enhance the bio-inspired design process.

Amphibians, like other vertebrates, respond to stressors through the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal (HPI) axis, leading to elevated levels of glucocorticoids in the bloodstream. The amphibian HPI axis is functionally analogous to the mammalian hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, coordinating the stress response via glucocorticoid release. Among these, corticosterone (CORT) acts as the principal downstream effector hormone, exerting widespread effects on various physiological systems. As seen in many other vertebrates, physiologically increased CORT levels are commonly associated with immune modulation, which might enhance or suppress the immune response. This immune outcome is influenced by several factors, including the duration and intensity of the stressors, the body condition of individuals, life history, and species-specific traits. Here, we provide a literature review on the role of stressors and CORT in amphibian immunity, including studies conducted in natural environments and controlled settings. These studies involve standardized stress protocols (i.e., restraint, captivity, and exogenous hormone treatment), along with "in vivo" and "in vitro" immune assays. Overall, CORT levels and their effects on immunity are highly variable, yet they do not act in isolation. There is significant interaction between CORT and other hormones, such as testosterone and melatonin, which further influences the immune response in amphibians. This interplay underscores the complexity of the stress-immune relationship and suggests that a holistic approach is essential to fully understand the impact of stressors on amphibian health and conservation.

Nature is an unparalleled innovator, coming up with countless solutions over millions of years. From the microscopic structures of gecko feet that enable effortless climbing to the hydrodynamic efficiency of fish armor, biological systems have evolved to solve a myriad of complex challenges. Engineers have long drawn inspiration from these natural innovations, translating biological principles into new technologies. The process is rarely straightforward-biological structures evolve under constraints and trade-offs, often leading to multifunctional designs that do not conform to traditional engineering approaches. Here, we explore the dynamic exchange between biology and engineering, highlighting how bioinspired design not only informs new technologies but also deepens our understanding of living systems. Bioinspired design plays a crucial role in materials science, robotics, and biomedical sciences, underscoring the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. Existing partnerships between biologists and engineers have led to advances in adhesives, protective materials, filtration systems, and dynamic structural designs. Translating biological complexity into engineered simplicity can be challenging; we need open communication between fields to share methodologies, resources, and discoveries. By fostering a continuous feedback loop between biology and engineering, we can push the boundaries of innovation and discovery, ensuring that bioinspired design remains a driving force in scientific and technological advancement.

We present a portable, noninvasive, and low-cost three-dimensional tracking method to quantify in situ water-hopping kinematics of mudskippers. By combining dual-camera video recordings with tracking the fish path, Gaussian Splatting terrain reconstruction and stereo matching, we capture detailed 3D trajectories of mudskippers in their natural tidal-flat habitats. Our proposed method resolves hopping motions including both straight and curved escape paths, and reveals that horizontal stride length, hopping height, and velocity are strongly influenced by fish length and local terrain features. These results highlight both the biomechanical and ecological significance of water-hopping in mudskippers, demonstrating how a simple, deployable 3D approach can resolve complex amphibious movements in challenging field environments.

The tongue plays a crucial role in feeding by positioning, manipulating, and transporting the bolus during chewing and swallowing. As a muscular hydrostat, its biomechanical function relies on regional deformations and coordinated movements with the jaw. Sensory feedback from oral afferents, particularly via the trigeminal nerve, is critical for modulating these movements and deformations. This study investigates how food texture and oral sensory perturbations influence tongue kinematics in an omnivorous carnivoran, the skunk (Mephitis mephitis). Using X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM) and controlled nerve blocks to the tongue and teeth, we analyzed tongue protraction-retraction, regional lengthening-shortening, and their timing relative to the gape cycle across three foods-banana, carrot, and kibble. Results indicate that food properties significantly impact tongue movements, with soft foods like banana eliciting greater anteroposterior motion and posterior tongue deformation. Despite these kinematic differences, the timing of tongue movements relative to jaw cycles remains consistent, but there are differences in the timing of regional lengthening and shortening between foods. Bilateral nerve blocks altered tongue kinematics and deformations, particularly regional deformations, but did not disrupt overall coordination with the chewing cycle. These findings suggest that oral afferents refine motor commands, optimizing tongue-bolus interactions while rhythmic jaw-tongue coordination patterns are maintained. This study enhances our understanding of sensorimotor integration in mammalian feeding and provides insights on tongue biomechanics as a muscular hydrostat.

Atlanta, renowned for its extensive urban tree canopies, embodies the concept of a "city in a forest." Spelman College, a historically Black college (HBCU), despite its relatively small footprint, acts as a steward for a small but vital portion of this urban forest. This compact campus, a shared habitat for students and a diverse ecosystem of trees, offers a unique living timeline of the institution's history. However, significant opportunities remain untapped in leveraging this environment for research and deeper student engagement with nature. This article describes the unique opportunities and rationale for student-staff collaborations within the Spelman Arboretum, highlighting how such partnerships can bridge the gap between urban students and their natural surroundings, expand scientific understanding beyond traditional disciplines, and foster a stronger sense of community. It presents several examples of activities born from the Tree Map project, a faculty learning community initiative-demonstrating the range of potential collaborations-and planning future projects from them. Furthermore, it invites faculty across disciplines to conduct studies within the Spelman Arboretum, bringing their science into the public eye and transforming the campus into a dynamic urban laboratory. By showcasing the Spelman Arboretum project as a potential model, we aim to inspire a comprehensive approach that utilizes this unique campus environment to ask interesting research questions and unify the college community.

Wildlife populations increasingly encounter unpredictable environmental conditions and reduced resource availability, influencing energy and protein available for immune defenses. According to resource-constraint hypotheses, central to ecoimmunology, organisms with more resources should have the ability to invest more into immune defenses. We investigated whether fat condition or protein content influenced three constitutive immune defenses-bacterial killing ability, hemolytic complement activity, and total antioxidant capacity-in mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). We used hundreds of samples from individuals captured during 2014-2021 and generalized linear models fit in a Bayesian framework to determine the probability of the direction of a relationship. Bacteria-killing ability had greatest probability (0.87) of a positive relationship with fat condition, and a 0.84 probability of a negative relationship with protein. In contrast, hemolytic complement activity had a 0.93 probability of being negatively associated with protein content and antioxidant capacity had a 0.94 probability of a positive association with protein content. Neither had a clear directional relationship with fat condition. Still, absolute effect sizes were small, and immune differences between a deer in poor nutritional condition and one in good nutritional condition were minor. The small effect sizes were contrary to the assumptions of many studies and might arise because the immune defenses in this study were constitutive, highly regulated by negative feedback cycles, and had low energy and resource costs. These nuanced results, however, support different, albeit small, effects of protein and fat reserves on immune defenses. Our results highlight the importance of assessing the assumed relationship between immune defenses and nutritional reserves in each population.

Mobulas (manta and devil rays) are large-scale ram filter feeders that separate planktonic food particles from large volumes of water with minimal clogging. This contrasts with most human-made filters that can suffer from problematic clogging requiring additional mechanisms for clearing blocked surfaces and maintaining performance. Prior studies have shown that mobulas employ a unique mechanism referred to as ricochet separation to filter feed, whereby captive vortices in filter pores cause particles to bounce off the filter surfaces and away from the filter pores. This mechanism enables the filtration of particles smaller than the pore size and reduced clogging. However, few studies have examined how the morphology of the filtering structure varies across the diversity of mobulid species, and little is known about how this variation may impact filtration efficiency or prey selectivity. This study conducts a systematic investigation of the gross morphology of the filtering structure in seven mobilid species using a combination of computed tomography and macro photography. Examination of filter anatomy suggests that some features are highly variable while others are well-conserved across species. In particular, a reconstruction of the phylogenetically corrected morphospaces indicated that the primary pore dimensions of the filter lobes are a major driver of morphological variation across species. Additionally, inspection of the gross anatomy revealed a pronounced asymmetry in the anterior and posterior filter plates of each gill arch. This asymmetry suggests that water may impinge on the filtering structures at different angles than has previously been speculated. Here, the functional ramifications of the observed morphological variations were interpreted using recent modeling studies. Most mobulid fishes have a filter morphology that should be capable of high filtration efficiency and low hydrodynamic resistance, but may also be sensitive to flow conditions. A deeper understanding of the mechanics of filter-feeding in mobulid fishes would generate needed insights into the ecology of these species and could provide a firmer framework for the development of bioinspired filtration systems. These findings highlight the value of integrating detailed anatomical studies into bioinspired design efforts and pave the way for the development of bioinspired filter systems with improved performance.

Existing and emerging diseases threaten wildlife populations worldwide and population resilience in the face of disease depends on immune responses. To apply conservation strategies to populations threatened by disease, it is critical to know not only how individuals will respond to the initial exposure of the pathogen but also to determine risks when the pathogen becomes endemic or is reintroduced. Immune responses following a subsequent exposure to a pathogen may vary from initial responses due to several immunological memory mechanisms such as adaptive immune function and innate immune priming/training and tolerance. Alternatively, immune responses may vary as a consequence of resource limitation. Regardless of outcome, these altered responses could impact how individuals respond to successive pathogen exposures in their environment. Disease threatens reptiles worldwide but research on reptilian immunology has lagged behind other taxonomic groups, resulting in large gaps in our understanding of both mechanistic and functional immune responses. Reptiles possess traditionally considered "innate" and "adaptive" immune components, but current literature seems to agree that reptiles depend largely on innate immune components as adaptive responses are slow. We present an exploratory study in which we measured functional immune responses in male red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) to 2 antigen injections representing bacterial (lipopolysaccharide), viral (polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid; poly(I:C), fungal infections (zymosan), and control (saline), administered 2 weeks apart. We separated serum and buffy layer (serum + BL) from blood samples and manipulated the serum + BL (fresh, frozen, frozen + heat) to systematically inactivate immune components. We conducted microbial killing assays using the manipulated serum + BL with Gram-negative Escherichia coli, Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus, and the diploid yeast Candida albicans, which allowed us to examine immune responses across various contexts. Although sample sizes were small, we observed varied responses across treatments and serum + BL/microbe assay combinations, suggesting that several mechanisms of immune memory may have occurred after the first treatment injection. Given the time frame of our exploratory study and previous research on acquired antibody production timing in reptiles, we suggest that our observations may be products of immune training/priming, tolerance, and resource reallocation. However, more work is necessary to examine these processes in reptiles and we make suggestions for future research directions. Our work further demonstrates the role that diverse immunological tools have in understanding immune strategies across taxa to enhance our knowledge of reptilian immunology and inform conservation decisions.

The mammalian tongue is a muscular hydrostat composed of multiple muscles, each with complex fiber architecture and small motor units. This allows it to move and deform in three dimensions (3D) to function in several complex behaviors, including suckling. The ability of infant mammals to successfully suckle is dependent on these variable deformations, as the tongue must perform multiple functions simultaneously. The lateral margins of the tongue curl to seal around a nipple, while the middle of the tongue moves in an anteroposterior wave to suck milk into the mouth, transport it posteriorly, and swallow it. The kinematics, mechanics, and coordination of the tongue during suckling are impacted by nipple properties, as evidenced by differences between feeding from nipples with narrow ducts (e.g., breastfeeding) and nipples that are hollow cisterns (e.g., bottle feeding). These structural differences result in different feeding outcomes, yet their effect on tongue function and kinematics is poorly understood. In addition, despite the 3D shape of the tongue during suckling, measurements of tongue movement have been limited to motion along the midsagittal plane and have not assessed suck volume. To evaluate how tongue function differs between ducted and cisternic nipples, we used X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology and a dynamic endocast, synchronized with intraoral suction, to quantify 3D tongue kinematics and suck volume. We found that pigs generated less suction but had greater suck volumes when they fed on cisternic nipples compared to ducted nipples. This is likely because the pigs compressed the cisternic nipple to express milk, resulting in higher flow, which we hypothesize slowed the accumulation of suction and permitted the tongue to achieve a larger suck volume. These results suggest that nipple design impacts the relationship between fluid dynamics and tongue function during feeding. In addition, we found that infants moved the surface of their tongue ventrally and posteriorly throughout the suck, but they did not increase the width of the suck volume. The use of a digital endocast to measure suck volume represents an important advance in our ability to evaluate the mechanics of feeding and could be used in the future to understand the relationships between tongue function and performance as infants mature, as well as in a comparative framework.