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. 2023 Nov 8;9(45):eadj2457. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adj2457

Fig. 1. Comparison of natural patterns in fish simulations.

Fig. 1.

(A) A male ornate boxfish (A. ornata) has intricate hexagon and stripe patterns on its skin. Reaction-diffusion models can capture the nature of the pattern but are unable to reproduce the sharpness of the color gradients. Instead, diffusiophoresis-enhanced reaction-diffusion shows a notable resemblance to the natural patterns when compared to simulations from our model. Photo courtesy of the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. White line segments and dashed lines indicate the edge thickness, i.e., 𝓁t and pattern sizes 𝓁p, respectively. (B) A jewel moray eel (M. lentiginosa). The double spot pattern cannot be reproduced from a two-component reaction-diffusion dynamics alone but is easily simulated as a diffusiophoretic process. Image by craigjhowe, used under CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Source: iNaturalist observation 37252428.