What's math got to do with patterns in fish?

Autor: Shirman, Blake, Volkening, Alexandria
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2201.08692
Popis: When you think of fish, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of pet goldfish, movie characters like Dory or Nemo, or trout in a local river. One of the things that all of these fish have in common is patterns in their skin. Nemo sports black and white stripes in his orange skin, and trout have spots. Even goldfish have a pattern -- it's just plain gold (and kinda boring). Why do some fish have stripes, others have spots, and others have plain patterns? It turns out that this is a tricky question, so scientists need tools from several subjects to answer it. In this paper, we use biology, math, and computer coding to help figure out how fish get different skin patterns.
Comment: This article, submitted to Frontiers for Young Minds, is for young readers (roughly ages 8--11). We introduce children to math biology and modeling through skin pattern formation in fish. If you or your children have any suggestions, we would appreciate your feedback. The website that we developed as supplementary material is here: https://simulatingzebrafish.gitlab.io/zebrafish-outreach/
Databáze: OpenAIRE