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Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated living earthworms

Ivan S. Maksymov, Andrey Pototsky
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/868521
Ivan S. Maksymov
1Centre for Micro-Photonics, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia
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Andrey Pototsky
2Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia
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Abstract

Biological cells and many living organisms are mostly made of liquids and therefore, by analogy with liquid drops, they should exhibit a range of fundamental nonlinear phenomena such as the onset of standing surface waves. Here, we test four common species of earthworm to demonstrate that vertical vibration of living worms lying horizontally of a flat solid surface results in the onset of subharmonic Faraday-like body waves, which is possible because earthworms have a hydrostatic skeleton with a flexible skin and a liquid-filled body cavity. Our findings are supported by theoretical analysis based on a model of parametrically excited vibrations in liquid-filled elastic cylinders using material parameters of the worm’s body reported in the literature. The ability to excite nonlinear subharmonic body waves in a living organism could be used to probe, and potentially to control, important biophysical processes such as the propagation of nerve impulses, thereby opening up avenues for addressing biological questions of fundamental impact.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted December 08, 2019.
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Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated living earthworms
Ivan S. Maksymov, Andrey Pototsky
bioRxiv 868521; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/868521
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Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated living earthworms
Ivan S. Maksymov, Andrey Pototsky
bioRxiv 868521; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/868521

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