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Moisture-Harvesting Reptiles: A Review

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Functional Surfaces in Biology III

Part of the book series: Biologically-Inspired Systems ((BISY,volume 10))

Abstract

Reptiles can live in arid environments due to special adaptations of their integument to such habitats. So called moisture-harvesting reptiles show behavioral and morphological adaptations, as their diet often does not cover the complete water demand and rain is scarce. The collection of water from various sources by moisture-harvesting reptiles is often accompanied by a stereotypical behavior: snakes coil up in the open and show a dorso-ventral flattening of their body to increase the surface area. Lizards also show a flattening of their body, but additionally raise their abdomen by splaying and extending their legs and lowering their head and tail. A similar behavior is observed in tortoises. Though there are several behavioral descriptions of moisture-harvesting reptiles, there are only few investigations about the physical principles enabling a passive collection of water. Special skin structures, comprising a micro structured surface with capillary channels in between imbricate overlapping scales, enable lizards to collect water efficiently. In some lizards, such as the Texas horned lizard Phrynosoma cornutum, water droplets applied to their body surface show a preferred spreading direction, transporting the water towards their mouth for ingestion. This passive directional transport is enabled by asymmetric and interconnected channels between the scales. Elucidation of the physical principles behind the directional water spreading has inspired a biomimetic transfer to optimize future applications in liquid handling, e.g. in fields of microfluidics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In educational books Cassie’s law is often denoted as Cassie-Baxter law, although the original Cassie-Baxter law describes a droplet on a rough surface with entrapped air (Cassie and Baxter 1944).

  2. 2.

    The influence of finite depth on the driving pressure difference is discussed in Buchberger et al. (2015).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Werner Baumgartner for inspiration and helpful comments related to this work. The authors’ work was supported by the European Commission within the project ‘LiNaBioFluid’ [665337].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Zoology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Anna-Christin Joel & Philipp Comanns

  2. Westphalian Institute of Biomimetics, Westphalian University of Applied Science, Bocholt, Germany

    Anna-Christin Joel

  3. Institute of Biomedical Mechatronics, JKU Linz, Linz, Austria

    Gerda Buchberger

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  1. Anna-Christin Joel
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  2. Gerda Buchberger
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Correspondence to Anna-Christin Joel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Zoological Institute, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Stanislav N. Gorb

  2. Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Zoological Institute, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Elena V. Gorb

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Joel, AC., Buchberger, G., Comanns, P. (2017). Moisture-Harvesting Reptiles: A Review. In: Gorb, S., Gorb, E. (eds) Functional Surfaces in Biology III. Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74144-4_4

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