ESPCI web site
PMMH’s weekly seminar is held every Friday at 11 am (map)
Stéphane Perrard
Etienne Reyssat
Virgile Thiévenaz
PMMH
BARRE CASSAN
BAT A 1ER ETAGE CASE 18
7 QUAI SAINT BERNARD
75005 PARIS
France
Tel : (33) 1 40 79 45 22
Anthony Herrel (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle)
Biomechanics and evolution in snakes
Morphological convergence as a consequence of extreme functional demands : examples from the feeding system of natricine snakes
Despite repeated acquisitions of aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyles revolving around piscivory, snakes have not evolved suction feeding. Instead, snakes use frontally or laterally directed strikes to capture prey under water. If the aquatic medium constrains strike performance because of its physical properties, we predict morphological and functional convergence in snakes that use similar strike behaviours. Here we use natricine snakes to test for such patterns of convergence in morphology and function. Our data show that frontal strikers have converged on a similar morphology characterized by narrow elongate heads with a reduced projected frontal surface area. Moreover, simple computational fluid dynamics models show that the observed morphological differences are likely biologically relevant as they affect the flow of water around the head. In general, our data suggest that the direction of evolution may be predictable if constraints are strong and evolutionary solutions limited.
The audience is composed of people with rather heterogeneous backgrounds including specialists in solids, fluids, granular flows, statistical physics... so the idea is to keep your talk understandable by people not necessarily working in your field... The seminar time slot runs from 11am to noon so the best is to make the talk last around 45 minutes to leave some time for discussion.
- Séminaires ESPCI-ENS de biophysique
- Séminaires du Département de Physique de l’ENS
- Séminaires du Laboratoire d’Hydrodynamique de l’X
- Séminaire de Mécanique d’Orsay (page web FAST)
- Séminaire de Mécanique d’Orsay (page web LIMSI)
- Séminaire de Mécanique des Fluides de l’Institut Jean le Rond d’Alembert
- Séminaires du laboratoire MSC, Paris VII
- Séminaires Gulliver
Link to cofee seminar (internal, every Thursday)
