Consequences of transient fluid forces for compliant benthic organisms

The diversity of form among benthic marine plants and animals on rocky coasts is remarkable. Stiff and strong organisms grow alongside others that are compliant and flimsy. Given the severity of wave action on many shores and thus the potential for the imposition of large hydrodynamic forces, this immediately raises the question of how, from this overall spectrum of designs, flexible and weak organisms survive. A number of explanations have been proposed, most emphasizing one or more of several possible advantages of deformability. Here, we explore quantitatively two of the more common of these explanations: (i) that strength can be traded against extensibility in allowing stretchy organisms to withstand transient wave forces, and (ii) that greater compliance (and thus longer organism response times) allows universally for the amelioration of brief loads. We find that, although these explanations contain kernels of validity and are accurate for a subset of conditions, they are not as general as has often been assumed.