Twenty-nine theories · no grouping · not peer reviewed
Twenty-two volumes sorted by field, mechanism, biome, discipline, timescale, trade-off and length. These twenty-nine resisted all of it — each one either spans two frames at once or denies the boundary the frame assumes. So they are printed in the order they arrived.
Tardigrade survival of desiccation is set by the ratio of trehalose concentration to cooling rate, so slow drying protects an animal that fast drying kills at the same sugar level.
Freeze tolerance in wood frogs is set by the ratio of glucose delivery rate to ice propagation rate, so a fast freeze outruns the cryoprotectant even in a fully provisioned animal.
Mussel attachment strength is set by the ratio of adhesive curing rate to the rate at which the load is applied, so a joint that fails under fast loading holds under slow.
Gecko adhesion is set by the ratio of contact splitting to surface roughness, so the same toe pads grip smooth glass and fail on a rough surface of matching scale.
Spider silk toughness is set by the ratio of crystalline beta-sheet size to amorphous chain length, so neither component alone predicts performance.
Structural colour in butterfly wings is set by the ratio of nanostructure period to wavelength, so a 5% change in development produces a different hue without any pigment change.
Firefly synchrony emerges only when the ratio of coupling strength to frequency dispersion exceeds a threshold, so a population of well-coupled but variable fireflies stays asynchronous.
Periodical cicada brood intervals are set by the ratio of predator cycle length to developmental time, favouring prime numbers because they minimise overlap with shorter cycles.
The locust phase transition is set by the ratio of crowding to food quality, so well-fed crowded insects remain solitary while hungry crowded ones gregarise.
Monarch navigation accuracy is set by the ratio of circadian clock precision to the rate the sun moves, so a slightly inaccurate clock produces a large directional error.
Salmon homing fidelity is set by the ratio of the imprinting window to migration duration, so a fish that imprints late cannot resolve its natal stream on return.
Eel spawning migration success is set by the ratio of lipid reserves to distance, so a fish that runs out of fat before arrival dies without spawning.
Migratory departure timing is set by the ratio of fuel load to wind assistance, so birds depart with less fuel when the wind is favourable and wait when it is not.
Whale song revolutions occur when the ratio of population connectedness to innovation rate falls below a threshold, so a well-connected ocean transmits novelty quickly and a fragmented one preserves old songs.
Ant colony decision accuracy is set by the ratio of quorum threshold to recruitment rate, so a low threshold commits too early and a slow recruitment reaches it too late.
Forager error in a honeybee colony is set by the ratio of waggle duration to distance, so accuracy degrades with distance because the code is linear while the error is not.
Orb web geometry is set by the ratio of silk investment to capture probability, so a spider under food stress builds a smaller web with wider spacing rather than a smaller copy.
Mycelial foraging strategy is set by the ratio of resource patchiness to cord construction cost, so a fungus builds cords only when patches are far apart and worth reaching.
The number of prion strains an animal supports is set by the ratio of conformational stability to replication fidelity, so error-prone replication produces more strains.
Capsid stability is set by the ratio of internal cargo pressure to shell strength, so a fuller capsid is more fragile despite being more compact.
Biofilm dispersal is triggered when the ratio of nutrient depletion to matrix degradation capacity crosses a threshold, so a well-fed biofilm stays put even when crowded.
An enzyme's secondary function appears when the ratio of secondary substrate to primary substrate concentration crosses a threshold, so moonlighting is a concentration phenomenon rather than a structural one.
Snake venom composition is set by the ratio of prey handling time to prey size, so species that subdue large prey quickly invest in fast-acting toxins rather than in quantity.
Eggshell porosity is set by the ratio of oxygen demand to water loss tolerance, so a high-altitude egg must be more porous for oxygen and therefore loses more water.
Investment in an elaiosome is set by the ratio of dispersal distance gained to seed predation risk, so plants pay ants more where the alternative is being eaten.
The duration of a whale-fall community is set by the ratio of carcass lipid to sulphide production rate, so a fat carcass supports chemosynthesis for decades.
Symbiont transmission strategy at vents is set by the ratio of vent lifetime to host generation time, so short-lived vents select for horizontal acquisition.
Eye regression in cave fish proceeds only when the ratio of energetic saving to pleiotropic cost exceeds one, so some cave populations retain eyes because losing them would break something else.
Water capture by a fog-harvesting beetle is set by the ratio of bump spacing to droplet size, so a surface tuned to one droplet spectrum captures poorly in another.
Every previous volume asserted that its frame was the useful one. This one asserts the opposite: that a residue exists which no frame holds, and that the residue is where the interesting theories live, because a theory that fits nowhere is usually one that spans a boundary the taxonomy assumed was real.
Entry page: scriptorium.html. There is deliberately no index.html, and deliberately no
contents taxonomy.
Publication records: source hashes · original README · original manifest · additive publication note