Our findings highlight a remarkably modular and robust propulsion mechanism found in a marine larva, which relies on short-range physical interactions to achieve ciliary coordination.

Thanks to Rebecca for all the hard work and @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy for the collaboration!

in fact, you can just keep removing cilia, until all but a single wavelength of the ciliary band remains. The tiny patch keeps propagating a metachronal wave! [watch video till the end]
(see paper for other interesting details about these waves)

with a single equatorial band made up of many many cilia. These propagate so-called 'metachronal waves', always in the same direction! The wave may look continuous, but in fact it's not!

Complex behaviour is not limited to animals! Here we map the entire spectrum of waveforms dynamics on a quadriflagellate single cell with 4x 70um (!) #cilia, to a low dimensional behavioural manifold with surprising structure! #protistsonsky

All revealed in our new preprint doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We have a postdoc opening for a protistologist with biophysics inclinations to join our @hfspo.bsky.social project! (focus will be on characterising the morphology, ultrastructure and behaviour of excavates) #protistsonsky

Apply by Sept 17th (RTs appreciated!)
jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

And here some synchronised flagella beating in action...