Summary
1. A re-examination of fast stepping in free-walking cockroaches showed that there was considerable variation in the alternating tripod gait.
2. Small load increments applied to the whole animal significantly reduced this variability and concentrated the range and speed of movements used.
3. Animals suspended above oiled glass surfaces moved their legs in normal gait patterns indicating that mechanical coupling via the substrate was not a critical factor for normal high-speed coordination.
4. Increasing the viscosity of the oil produced the same reduction in variability found with load increment so the change cannot be due to increased mechanical coupling.
5. Increasing the viscosity of the oil under one leg alone resulted in concentration over the whole pattern so the result was not considered to be due to viscosity changes.
6. The changes seen in artificial loading situations were mimicked in natural loading situations such as walking up a slight incline.
7. The functional significance of the phenomenon for the stability of the rapidly moving animal is considered and the role of load afference in biasing central pattern generators to produce a continuous range of functional output is discussed.
- © 1986 by Company of Biologists
Article navigation
Related articles
Cited by...
More in this TOC section
Similar articles
Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editorial – The changing of the guard
In his Editorial, Hans Hoppeler announces that he will be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of JEB in July 2020. He reflects on the history of JEB, why he has enjoyed his tenure as JEB’s Editor-in-Chief and the recent developments in the publishing world.
Editors’ choice – Parental stressor exposure simultaneously conveys both adaptive and maladaptive larval phenotypes through epigenetic inheritance in the zebrafish (Danio rerio)
An oil spill is never a good thing, but Naim Bautista and Warren Burggren have shown that zebrafish can pass on resistance to the damaging effects of an oil-spiked diet to their offspring.
The derivative of force with respect to time does not have a standard term in physics. In their new Commentary, David C. Lin and his colleagues propose that the term ‘yank’ should be used to denote the time derivative of force.
Runners waste energy every time their legs stop swinging, but now a team of scientists from the US and Canada have shown that a springy ankle tether can reduce runners’ energy costs by 6.4%, which is nearly the entire cost of swinging the limbs. Read the full research article here.
Journal of Experimental Biology is pleased to announce a new partnership with Publons! This allows reviewers to easily track and verify every review by choosing to add the review to their Publons profile when completing the review submission form. Publons also makes it simple for reviewers to showcase their peer review contributions in a format that can be included in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity). Read the official announcement here!
The Company of Biologists provides grants to fund scientific meetings, workshops and conferences in the fields covered by our journals. Typically, meetings with fewer than 100 people may be granted up to £2,000, increasing up to £6,000 for about 400 people. The next deadline to apply is 28 November 2019.
preLights – preLights reaches 500 posts!
The success of preLights is down to the hard work of our preLighters. Head over to the preLights website to find out more about our most active early-career-researchers.