Some notes:
- There are some great videos on swarming behaviour of animals. Here are just two quick examples: a starling murmuration and a school of tuna.
- Segmentation stripes are formed in the first hours of a fly’s development. They are the molecular markers that give rise to the actual body segments of a fly.
- More generally speaking, early development in the fruit fly (official species name Drosophila melanogaster) is a well-studied topic. See for instance this beautiful video and check out this “cyberspace guide”.
- Paulien Hogeweg already mentioned this challenge of understanding how complex rules generate complex dynamics several years ago as we were chatting.
- The figure was made with Matplotlib using the XKCD look.
What: many biological systems seem complicated in their dynamics. Take gastrulation, formation of the brain, evolution of the uterus, gain and loss of memory, courtship behaviour, etc. Yet I would not know if any of these fall within the upper right corner as we do not yet know the rules 😉 Perhaps eukaryotic gene regulation is an example of the upper-right corner?
How: we’ll need many approaches, both experimental and theoretical, to give us different views on a system of interest. I would advocate to use or develop your method according to the research questions one has—and not to fall into the trap of “if all you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail”.
Great question, thanks!
Hey Anton,
Nice blog!
Do you have any idea yet on what to tackle in the upper right corner, and how?
Cheers 😉