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Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect
Food consumption and waste elimination are vital functions for living systems. Although how feeding impacts animal form and function has been studied for more than a century since Darwin, how its obligate partner, excretion, controls and constrains animal behavior, size, and energetics remains large...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9975225/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36854758 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36376-5 |
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author | Challita, Elio J. Sehgal, Prateek Krugner, Rodrigo Bhamla, M. Saad |
author_facet | Challita, Elio J. Sehgal, Prateek Krugner, Rodrigo Bhamla, M. Saad |
author_sort | Challita, Elio J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Food consumption and waste elimination are vital functions for living systems. Although how feeding impacts animal form and function has been studied for more than a century since Darwin, how its obligate partner, excretion, controls and constrains animal behavior, size, and energetics remains largely unexplored. Here we study millimeter-scale sharpshooter insects (Cicadellidae) that feed exclusively on a plant’s xylem sap, a nutrient-deficit source (95% water). To eliminate their high-volume excreta, these insects exploit droplet superpropulsion, a phenomenon in which an elastic projectile can achieve higher velocity than the underlying actuator through temporal tuning. We combine coupled-oscillator models, computational fluid dynamics, and biophysical experiments to show that these insects temporally tune the frequency of their anal stylus to the Rayleigh frequency of their surface tension-dominated elastic drops as a single-shot resonance mechanism. Our model predicts that for these tiny insects, the superpropulsion of droplets is energetically cheaper than forming jets, enabling them to survive on an extreme energy-constrained xylem-sap diet. The principles and limits of superpropulsion outlined here can inform designs of energy-efficient self-cleaning structures and soft engines to generate ballistic motions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9975225 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99752252023-03-02 Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect Challita, Elio J. Sehgal, Prateek Krugner, Rodrigo Bhamla, M. Saad Nat Commun Article Food consumption and waste elimination are vital functions for living systems. Although how feeding impacts animal form and function has been studied for more than a century since Darwin, how its obligate partner, excretion, controls and constrains animal behavior, size, and energetics remains largely unexplored. Here we study millimeter-scale sharpshooter insects (Cicadellidae) that feed exclusively on a plant’s xylem sap, a nutrient-deficit source (95% water). To eliminate their high-volume excreta, these insects exploit droplet superpropulsion, a phenomenon in which an elastic projectile can achieve higher velocity than the underlying actuator through temporal tuning. We combine coupled-oscillator models, computational fluid dynamics, and biophysical experiments to show that these insects temporally tune the frequency of their anal stylus to the Rayleigh frequency of their surface tension-dominated elastic drops as a single-shot resonance mechanism. Our model predicts that for these tiny insects, the superpropulsion of droplets is energetically cheaper than forming jets, enabling them to survive on an extreme energy-constrained xylem-sap diet. The principles and limits of superpropulsion outlined here can inform designs of energy-efficient self-cleaning structures and soft engines to generate ballistic motions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9975225/ /pubmed/36854758 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36376-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Challita, Elio J. Sehgal, Prateek Krugner, Rodrigo Bhamla, M. Saad Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title | Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title_full | Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title_fullStr | Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title_full_unstemmed | Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title_short | Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
title_sort | droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9975225/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36854758 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36376-5 |
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