Benefits of increased size and functional specialization of cells have repeatedly promoted
the evolution of multicellular organisms from unicellular ancestors. Many requirements for …

The diversity of the morphologies, propulsion mechanisms, flow environments, and
behaviors of planktonic microorganisms has long provided inspiration for fluid physicists …

The coordination of eukaryotic flagella is essential for many of the most basic processes of
life (motility, sensing, and development), yet its emergence and regulation and its …

In the past decade, the volvocine green algae, spanning from the unicellular
Chlamydomonas to multicellular Volvox, have emerged as model organisms for a number of …

The spherical alga Volvox swims by means of flagella on thousands of surface somatic cells.
This geometry and its large size make it a model organism for studying the fluid dynamics of …

This work reviews the present position of and surveys future perspectives in the physics of
chaotic advection: the field that emerged three decades ago at the intersection of fluid …

The division of labour, whereby individuals within a group specialize in certain tasks, has
long been appreciated as central to the evolution of complex biological societies. In recent …

Individuality is a complex trait, yet a series of stages each advantageous in itself can be
shown to exist allowing evolution to get from unicellular individuals to multicellular …

Living systems employ cilia to control and to sense the flow of fluids for many purposes, such
as pum**, locomotion, feeding, and tissue morphogenesis. Beyond their use in biology …

Nearly close-packed populations of the swimming bacterium Bacillus subtilis form a
collective phase, the “Zooming BioNematic”(ZBN). This state exhibits largescale …