Table 1.

Parameters of the delayed coupling theory and their values in zebrafish embryo at 28 °C near the ten somite stage. The first five parameters have been determined before or come from our observations. PSM length L and decay length of the frequency profile σ come from fits of our theory to experimental data in Giudicelli et al. (2007). The parameters ω_L and τ could not be determined independently in this work, but they are related by Eq. 5. Note that parameters change with temperature and throughout development (Schröter et al., 2008). We choose as length unit one cell diameter (cd), in terms of which the distance between neighbor oscillators is a=1 cd.

T	Period of somite formationa	23.5 min
Ω	Collective frequency, 2π∕T	0.267 min−1
S	Somite size (our own experimental estimation)	6 cd
v	Velocity of the arrest front, v=S∕T	0.255 cd min−1
ε	Coupling strengthb	0.07 cd2 min−1
L	PSM length	39 cd
σ	Decay length of the frequency profile	36 cd
τ	Time delay	Not determined
ωL	Intrinsic frequency in the posterior PSM

^aSchröter et al. (2008).

^bRiedel-Kruse et al. (2007).