ArticleBiology letters2016
The speed-curvature power law in Drosophila larval locomotion.
Article in Biology letters, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Current status of mathematical foundations of the Gestalt concepts in psychophysics.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Biological kinematics: a detailed review of the velocity-curvature power law calculation.Experimental brain research · 2025Review
- The effect of the preferred hand on drawing movement.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Do bumblebees have signatures? Demonstrating the existence of a speed-curvature power law in Bombus terrestris locomotion patterns.PloS one · 2020Article
- A Neuronal Pathway that Commands Deceleration in Drosophila Larval Light-Avoidance.Neuroscience bulletin · 2019Article
- Modelling the mechanics of exploration in larval Drosophila.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Bioinspired Implementation and Assessment of a Remote-Controlled Robot.Applied bionics and biomechanics · 2019Article
- The power law as behavioral illusion: reappraising the reappraisals.Experimental brain research · 2018Review
- The speed-curvature power law of movements: a reappraisal.Experimental brain research · 2018Article
- The power law of movement: an example of a behavioral illusion.Experimental brain research · 2017Article
- The speed-curvature power law in Drosophila larval locomotion.Biology letters · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We report the discovery that the locomotor trajectories of Drosophila larvae follow the power-law relationship between speed and curvature previously found in the movements of human and non-human primates. Using high-resolution behavioural tracking in controlled but naturalistic sensory environments, we tested the law in maggots tracing different trajectory types, from reaching-like movements to scribbles. For most but not all flies, we found that the law holds robustly, with an exponent close to three-quarters rather than to the usual two-thirds found in almost all human situations, suggesting dynamic effects adding on purely kinematic constraints. There are different hypotheses for the origin of the law in primates, one invoking cortical computations, another viscoelastic muscle properties coupled with central pattern generators. Our findings are consistent with the latter view and demonstrate that the law is possible in animals with nervous systems orders of magnitude simpler than in primates. Scaling laws might exist because natural selection favours processes that remain behaviourally efficient across a wide range of neural and body architectures in distantly related species.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.