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Description
Abstract of Proc. Roy. Soc. article:
Hagfishes defend themselves from gill-breathing predators by producing large volumes of fibrous slime when attacked. The slime’s effectiveness comes from its ability to clog predators’ gills, but the mechanisms by which hagfish slime clogs are uncertain, especially given its remarkably dilute concentration of solids. We quantified the clogging performance of hagfish slime over a range of concentrations, measured the contributions of its mucous and thread components, and measured the effect of turbulent mixing on clogging. To assess the porous structure of hagfish slime, we used a custom device to measure its Darcy permeability. We show that hagfish slime clogs at extremely dilute concentrations like those found in native hagfish slime and displays clogging performance that is superior to three thickening agents. We report an extremely low Darcy permeability for hagfish slime, and an effective pore size of 10-300 nm. We also show that the mucous and thread components play distinct yet crucial roles, with mucus being responsible for effective clogging and low permeability and the threads imparting mechanical strength and retaining clogging function over time. Our results provide new insights into the mechanisms by which hagfish slime clogs gills and may inspire the development of ultra-soft materials with novel properties.
Publication Date
2-24-2023
Keywords
supplementary data, hagfish, slime, clogging, Darcy permeability
Disciplines
Marine Biology
Recommended Citation
Taylor, Luke et al. (2023). Data from: Mechanisms of gill-clogging by hagfish slime [data set]. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000428
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Data accompanying the article "Mechanisms of gill-clogging by hagfish slime", accepted by the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on Feb 13, 2023.