ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Functional consequences of convergently evolved microscopic skin features on snake locomotion.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Form and function in biological filaments: a physicist's review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Nanopores in the ventral scales ofBiology letters · 2025Article
- Grand challenges for burrowing soft robots.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Review
- A biogeographic comparison of two convergent bird families.PloS one · 2025Article
- Effect of Surface Morphology and Internal Structure on the Tribological Behaviors of Snake Scales fromBiomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Geometric phase predicts locomotion performance in undulating living systems across scales.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Complexity biomechanics: a case study of dragonfly wing design from constituting composite material to higher structural levels.Interface focus · 2024Article
- Locomotor kinematics on sand versus vinyl flooring in the sidewinder rattlesnake Crotalus cerastes.Biology open · 2023Article
- Worm blobs as entangled living polymers: from topological active matter to flexible soft robot collectives.Soft matter · 2023Review
- Self-propulsion via slipping: Frictional swimming in multilegged locomotors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Coordinating tiny limbs and long bodies: Geometric mechanics of lizard terrestrial swimming.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Scaling and relations of morphology with locomotor kinematics in the sidewinder rattlesnake Crotalus cerastes.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Friction modulation in limbless, three-dimensional gaits and heterogeneous terrains.Nature communications · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The small structures that decorate biological surfaces can significantly affect behavior, yet the diversity of animal-environment interactions essential for survival makes ascribing functions to structures challenging. Microscopic skin textures may be particularly important for snakes and other limbless locomotors, where substrate interactions are mediated solely through body contact. While previous studies have characterized ventral surface features of some snake species, the functional consequences of these textures are not fully understood. Here, we perform a comparative study, combining atomic force microscopy measurements with mathematical modeling to generate predictions that link microscopic textures to locomotor performance. We discover an evolutionary convergence in the ventral skin structures of a few sidewinding specialist vipers that inhabit sandy deserts-an isotropic texture that is distinct from the head-to-tail-oriented, micrometer-sized spikes observed on a phylogenetically broad sampling of nonsidewinding vipers and other snakes from diverse habitats and wide geographic range. A mathematical model that relates structural directionality to frictional anisotropy reveals that isotropy enhances movement during sidewinding, whereas anisotropy improves movement during slithering via lateral undulation of the body. Our results highlight how an integrated approach can provide quantitative predictions for structure-function relationships and insights into behavioral and evolutionary adaptations in biological systems.
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