Growth produces coordination trade-offs in Trichoplax adhaerens, an animal lacking a central nervous system.

ABSTRACT: How collectives remain coordinated as they grow in size is a fundamental challenge affecting systems ranging from biofilms to governments. This challenge is particularly apparent in multicellular organisms, where coordination among a vast number of cells is vital for coherent animal behavior. However, the earliest multicellular organisms were decentralized, with indeterminate sizes and morphologies, as exemplified by Trichoplax adhaerens, arguably the earliest-diverged and simplest motile animal. We investigated coordination among cells in T. adhaerens by observing the degree of collective order in locomotion across animals of differing sizes and found that larger individuals exhibit increasingly disordered locomotion. We reproduced this effect of size on order through a simu

SUBMITTER: Davidescu MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10089153 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature