The Experimental Zoology Group (EZO) combines physics, engineering, molecular techniques and modelling in a quantitative systems analysis to solve fundamental problems in biology. This provides insights that we use to offer solutions for practical problems with societal relevance. We investigate relationships between form and function to explain structural changes on evolutionary and developmental time scales. We focus our research on animal mechanics and developmental mechanics, with applications to animal health and welfare and bio-inspired designs.
The main research area is the biomechanics of the locomotory system in vertebrates in air, water and on land (in particular birds, zebrafish, horses and recently cows).
Within this common theme four research lines are integrated that profit from one another: (1) biofluiddynamics of swimming and flight, in which the effects of body motions on the fluid flow are considered, (2) structure-fluid interactions of swimming in larval fish, in which effects of muscle activation on the combined motion of body and flow are studied, (3) the effects of movement mechanics on the archi¬tectural organisation and remodelling of muscles and skeleton (including effects of training on the regulation of growth and develop¬ment), and (4) applications of the previous lines to animal health and bioinspired designs of unmanned aerial and aquatic vehicles. Our research is not exclusively restricted to these lines because our quantitative and deductive approach provides unique opportunities to tackle a range of important problems, such as biomechanics of tongues, sensors, and more recently the mechanism of host search in malaria mosquitoes.
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