{"id":41664,"date":"2025-12-18T16:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/?p=41664"},"modified":"2025-12-18T16:13:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:13:22","slug":"decentralized-rhythmic-motion-in-soft-corals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/decentralized-rhythmic-motion-in-soft-corals\/","title":{"rendered":"Decentralized Rhythmic Motion in Soft Corals"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Decentralized Rhythmic Motion in Soft Corals<\/a><\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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19.10.2025<\/p>\n

A new study from our Marine Biology Department, published in PNAS<\/em>, reveals a unique mechanism behind the rhythmic pulsation of the soft coral Xenia umbellata<\/em>– a species that has existed for over half a billion years.<\/p>\n

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Key finding: Unlike most animals that rely on a central pacemaker to coordinate rhythmic movements, Xenia<\/em> operates without a central control system. Each tentacle\u2014or even a fragment of a tentacle\u2014functions as an autonomous pacemaker, forming a fully decentralized network.<\/p>\n

This discovery provides important insights into the evolutionary origins of rhythmic motion and may inform future developments in soft robotics, distributed systems, and our understanding of biological rhythmicity.<\/p>\n

The research was led by Prof. Tamar Lotan in collaboration with Prof. Yehuda Benayahu (Tel Aviv University) and joint PhD student Elinor Nadir.<\/p>\n

Read the full paper in PNAS<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A new study from our Marine Biology Department, published in PNAS, reveals a unique mechanism behind the rhythmic pulsation of the soft coral Xenia umbellata\u2014a species that has existed for over half a billion years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[107,103,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-media","category-news","category-news-archive","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marsci.haifa.ac.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}