Lepidoptera demonstrate the relevance of Murray's Law to circulatory systems with tidal flow.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Murray's Law, which describes the branching architecture of bifurcating tubes, predicts the morphology of vessels in many amniotes and plants. Here, we use insects to explore the universality of Murray's Law and to evaluate its predictive power for the wing venation of Lepidoptera, one of the most diverse insect orders. Lepidoptera are particularly relevant to the universality of Murray's Law because their wing veins have tidal, or oscillatory, flow of air and hemolymph. We examined over one thousand wings representing 667 species of Lepidoptera.

Results

We found that veins with a diameter above approximately 50 microns conform to Murray's Law, with veins below 50 microns in diameter becoming less and less likely to conform to Murray's Law as they narrow. The minu

SUBMITTER: Schachat SR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8444497 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature