NISHIKAWA 9809942 As functional morphologists and neurobiologists, the PIs wish to predict how patterns of muscle activation should change, not only when an individual performs different tasks but also during its lifetime as it grows, and as body proportions change during evolution. These tasks are currently beyond the PIs reach because patterns of muscle activation are affected by a large number of factors, including the contractile properties of the muscles, their mechanical advantage, the masses and lengths of the segments, and the force, velocity and duration of movement. Unraveling the complexity of muscle activation is an important basic problem of organismal biology. The goal of the proposed research is to develop prey capture in frogs as a model system for investigating this problem. In this proposal, the PIs seek funds to develop biornechanical models that will predict how body size and morphological evolution affect patterns of muscle activation; and for empirical studies that will be used to modify the models and test their predictions. These studies will contribute significantly to the development of a theoretical framework in which the effects of body size and morphological evolution on patterns of muscle activation can be predicted and ultimately tested.
