Achievement

Faculty participant Michael Brenner, trainee Rachel Pepper and colleagues from both applied mathematics and evolutionary biology have shown that the spores of ascomycete fungi have drag-minimizing shapes such that they are within 1% of the minimum possible drag for their size. Spore shape was also a good predictor of launch velocity, as confirmed by high speed imaging. Examination of the coevolution of spore shape and size over the reconstructed phylogenetic history of one family of fungi, the Pertusariaceae, shows strong evidence for selection for drag minimization. This work was published in PNAS in December 2008.