Submission + - Turing maths poses simple origin for complex skins (newscientist.com)
techbeat writes: "The labyrinthine patterns on the skins of some animals may be the result of interbreeding between two more simply patterned species," writes New Scientist. A Japanese team of researchers tuned parameters within reaction-diffusion equations, dreamed up decades ago by Alan Turing , the second world war code breaker, so that they produced the patterns of two spotted salmonids. The researchers "crossed" these parameters, producing a set of intermediate values, which they plugged these into the equations. The resulting in silico offspring had coats that matched those seen in real, hybrid salmonids.
