Symposium: Mechanics of Plants, Animals and their Environments: Integrative Perspectives January 11-16, 1998 Santa Barbara, California

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Humphrey 9727180 The Symposium will bring together a highly interdisciplinary mix of biologists, physical scientists (chemists, physicists, mathematicians) and engineers to present and discuss fluid-, solid-, them~o-mechanics and dynamics phenomena related to plants, animals, and their environments. The length scale range of interest spans single cells, to entire organisms, to their host environments, implying length scale ratios exceeding 10'2 and including the extremes of micro (molecular) and macro (atmosphericJoceanographic) forces. Many disparate phenomena are described by a common set of physical laws. They include the breaking of a limb from a tree, the lifting of a load by an ant, the sensing of vibrations by a spider, the dispersion of seeds or chemical pollutants by the wind, the flight of birds and insects, the swimming of fish, the transportation of oxygen via blood cells, the rising of sap in trees, the hot chemical discharge from the bombardier beetle, the solar radiation interception by a butterfly's wings, the dispersal and sensing of pheromone plumes in moths, the locomotion of water striders on water surfaces, filter feeding in marine animals, insect sound production, the mechanics of single cells and their membranes and skeletons, the physico-chemicai properties of arthropod exoskeletons, the mechanics of blood flow through large blood vessels and in capillaries, the optima of certain organismal forms in relation to function. This provides a natural way to analyze a diverse collection of biological phenomena that might otherwise: appear totally unrelated; a way to find underlying commonalities among them, not in the traditional biological areas, but in terms of the physics that affect them in their environments.