English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Appendages of seeds, fruits and other diaspores (dispersal units) areessential for their wind dispersal, as they act as wings and enable them tofly. Whirling fruits generate an auto-gyrating motion from their sepals, a leaflike structure, which curve upwards and outwards, creating a lift force thatcounteracts gravitational force. The link of the fruit's sepal shape to flightperformance, however, is as yet unknown. We develop a theoretical model andperform experiments for double-winged bio-mimetic 3D-printed fruits, where weassume that the plant has a limited amount of energy that it can convert into amass to build sepals and, additionally, allow them to curve. Both hydrodynamictheory and experiments involving synthetic, double-winged fruits show that toproduce a maximal flight time there is an optimal fold angle for the desiccatedsepals. A similar sepal fold angle is found for a wide range of whirling fruitscollected in the wild, highlighting that wing curvature can aid as an efficientmechanism for wind dispersal of seeds and may improve the fitness of theirproducers in the context of an ecological strategy.

Curving to fly: Synthetic adaptation unveils optimal flight performance of whirling fruits