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Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has bee...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5046118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27694826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283 |
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author | Bang, Kyeongtae Kim, Jooha Lee, Sang-Im Choi, Haecheon |
author_facet | Bang, Kyeongtae Kim, Jooha Lee, Sang-Im Choi, Haecheon |
author_sort | Bang, Kyeongtae |
collection | PubMed |
description | Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has been performed to understand their hydrodynamic roles. Here we show that these ridges are slightly misaligned to the streamlines around the body to generate streamwise vortices, and suppress or delay flow separation on the carapace, resulting in enhanced hydrodynamic performances during different modes of swimming. Our results suggest that shapes of some morphological features of living creatures, like the longitudinal ridges of the leatherback turtles, need not be streamlined for excellent hydro- or aerodynamic performances, contrary to our common physical intuition. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5046118 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-50461182016-10-11 Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming Bang, Kyeongtae Kim, Jooha Lee, Sang-Im Choi, Haecheon Sci Rep Article Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has been performed to understand their hydrodynamic roles. Here we show that these ridges are slightly misaligned to the streamlines around the body to generate streamwise vortices, and suppress or delay flow separation on the carapace, resulting in enhanced hydrodynamic performances during different modes of swimming. Our results suggest that shapes of some morphological features of living creatures, like the longitudinal ridges of the leatherback turtles, need not be streamlined for excellent hydro- or aerodynamic performances, contrary to our common physical intuition. Nature Publishing Group 2016-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5046118/ /pubmed/27694826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Bang, Kyeongtae Kim, Jooha Lee, Sang-Im Choi, Haecheon Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title | Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title_full | Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title_fullStr | Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title_full_unstemmed | Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title_short | Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
title_sort | hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5046118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27694826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283 |
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