Science, Space and Technology News 2024
Researchers at Binghamton University are exploring how fire ants form floating rafts to survive floods, with the goal of applying these biological mechanisms to materials science. The team studied the adaptive and mechanical properties of these ant rafts, discovering that they exhibit a unique ‘catch bond’ behavior that strengthens under stress.
Wagner sees this storage and conversion of energy as essential to mimicking the smart and adaptive behaviors of living systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences But Wagner and his collaborators discovered that no matter what speed they pulled the ant rafts, their mechanical response was nearly the same, and they never flowed. Wagner speculates that the ants reflexively tighten and prolong their holds when they feel force because they want to stay together. They either turn down or turn off their dynamic behavior.
“As you pull on typical bonds with some amount of force, they’re going to let go sooner, and their lifetime goes down — you’re weakening the bond by pulling on it. That is what you see in almost any passive system,” Wagner said. “But in living systems, because of their complexity, you can sometimes have catch bonds that hold on for longer durations under some range of applied force. Some proteins do this mechanistically and automatically, but it’s not like the proteins are making a decision.
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