BackgroundAnimals use environmental information to make developmental decisions to maximise their fitness. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans measures its environment to decide between arresting development as dauer larvae or continuing to grow and reproduce. Worms are thought to use ascarosides as signals of population density and this signalling is thought to be a species-wide honest signal. We compared recently wild C. elegans lines’ dauer larva arrest when presented with the same ascaroside signals and in different food environments.ResultsWe find that the hitherto canonical dauer larva response does not hold among these lines. Ascaroside molecules can, depending on the food environment, both promote and repress dauer larva formation. Further, these recently wild C. elegans lines also produce ascaroside mixtures that induce a wide diversity of dauer larva formation responses. We further find that the lines differ in the quantity and ratios of ascaroside molecules that they release. Some of the dauer larva formation responses are consistent with dishonest signalling.ConclusionsTogether, the results suggest that the idea that dauer larva formation is an honestly-signalled C. elegans-wide effect does not hold. Rather, the results suggest that ascaroside-based signalling is a public broadcast information system, but where the correct interpretation of that information depends on the worms’ context, and is a system open to dishonest signalling.

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This paper provides an up-to-date survey of the use of zonal detached eddy simulations (ZDES) for unsteady civil aircraft applications as a reflection on the stakes and perspectives of the use of hybrid methods in the framework of industrial aerodynamics. The issue of zonal or non-zonal treatment of turbulent flows for engineering applications is discussed. The ZDES method used in this article and based on a fluid problem-dependent zonalization is briefly presented. Some recent landmark achievements for conditions all over the flight envelope are presented, including low-speed (aeroacoustics of high-lift devices and landing gear), cruising (engine-airframe interactions), propulsive jets and off-design (transonic buffet and dive manoeuvres) applications. The implications of such results and remaining challenges in a more global framework are further discussed.

Junction flows may suffer from secondary flows such as horseshoe vortices and corner separations that can dramatically impair the performances of aircrafts. The present article brings into focus the unsteady aspects of the flow at the intersection of a wing and a flat plate. The simplified junction flow test case is designed according to a literature review to favor the onset of a corner separation. The salient statistical and fluctuating properties of the flow are scrutinized using large eddy simulation and wind tunnel tests, which are carried out at a Reynolds number based on the wing chord c and the free stream velocity U∞ of Rec=2.8×105. As the incoming boundary layer at Reθ=2100 (θ being the boundary layer momentum thickness one-half chord upstream the junction) experiences the adverse pressure gradient created by the wing, a three dimensional separation occurs at the nose of the junction leading to the formation of a horseshoe vortex. The low frequency, large scale bimodal behavior of the horseshoe vortex at the nose of the junction is characterized by multiple frequencies within f.δ/U∞=[0.05−0.1] (where δ is the boundary layer thickness one-half chord upstream the wing). Downstream of the bimodal region, the meandering of the core of the horseshoe vortex legs in the crossflow planes is scrutinized. It is found that the horseshoe vortex oscillates around a mean location over an area covering almost 10% of the wing chord in the tranverse plane at the trailing edge at normalized frequencies around f.δ/U∞=0.2–0.3. This so-called meandering is found to be part of a global dynamics of the horseshoe vortex initiated by the bimodal behavior. Within the corner, no separation is observed and it is shown that a high level of anisotropy (according to Lumley’s formalism) is reached at the intersection of the wing and the flat plate, which makes the investigated test case challenging for numerical methods. The conditions of apparition of a corner separation are eventually discussed and we assume that the vicinity of the horseshoe vortex suction side leg might prevent the corner separation. It is also anticipated that higher Reynolds number junction flows are more likely to suffer from such separations.