How important are skeletal muscle mechanics in setting limits on jumping performance?

Abstract

SUMMARY Jumping is an important locomotor behaviour used by many animals. The power required to perform a jump is supplied by skeletal muscle. The mechanical properties of skeletal muscle, including the power it can produce, are determined by its composition, which in turn reflects trade-offs between the differing tasks performed by the muscle. Recent studies suggest that muscles used for jumping are relatively fast compared with other limb muscles. As animals get bigger absolute jump performance tends to increase, but recent evidence suggests that adult jump performance may be relatively independent of body size. As body size increases the relative shortening velocity of muscle decreases, whereas normalised power output remains relatively constant. However, the relative shortening velocity of the fastest muscle fibre types appears to remain relatively constant over a large body size range of species. It appears likely that in many species during jumping, other factors are compensating for, or allowing for, uncoupling of jumping performance from size-related changes in the mechanical properties of muscle. In some species smaller absolute body size is compensated for by rapid development of locomotor morphology to attain high locomotor performance early in life. Smaller animal species also appear to rely more heavily on elastic storage mechanisms to amplify the power output available from skeletal muscle. Adaptations involving increased relative hindlimb length and relative mass of jumping muscles, and beneficial alteration of the origin and/or insertion of jumping muscles, have all been found to improve animal jump performance. However, further integrative studies are needed to provide conclusive evidence of which morphological and physiological adaptations are the most important in enhancing jump performance.

No apparent ecological trend to the flight-initiating jump performance of five bat species

“…Alexander, 1995;Caple et al, 1983;Demes et al, 1996;Gabriel, 1984;Harris and Steudel, 2002;James et al, 2007;Schutt et al, 1997;Toro et al, 2003). A jump (as opposed to continuous hopping) is generally considered to be a single discrete kinematic event.…”

Explosive Jumping: Extreme Morphological and Physiological Specializations of Australian Rocket Frogs (Litoria nasuta)

“…Jumping performance is commonly used as a model to investigate relationships between morphology, skeletal muscle mechanics, and locomotor performance (Marsh 1994;Rome 2002;Toro et al 2003;James et al 2005James et al , 2007. The relative simplicity of this locomotor system allows ballistics formulas to be used to calculate kinematic and kinetic variables of jump performance and to highlight the relationships between morphological, physiological, and kinematic variables.…”

“…In theory, jump distance in geometrically similar animals is independent of body size (Hill 1950). However, considerable variation in body form between species results in variation in maximum jump distance with body size, typically yielding a between-species scaling exponent of 0.20 M b (Marsh 1994;James et al 2007). Anuran jumping is an ideal system for examining the relationships between these variables because the contractile properties of frog hindlimb muscle have been extensively studied, and there is large interspecific variation in jump performance that appears to be related to specialization in morphology (Zug 1978;Marsh 1994;James et al 2007).…”

“…Equation (2) suggests that any species capable of extreme jumping performance probably exhibits a number of morphological and/or physiological adaptations (Emerson 1985;James et al 2007), such as increasing relative hindlimb length (to increase L and/or L : M b ratio), increasing the proportion of body mass devoted to skeletal muscle mass used to power jumping (to increase and/or : M b ratio), altering muscle me-Ẇ W chanics to increase muscle power output (to increase ), anḋ W increasing elastic strain energy used to enhance muscle power output (to increase ). Both relative hindlimb length (hind-W limb length : body length) and relative hindlimb muscle mass (muscle mass : body mass) have been found to vary among species and to affect jump performance.…”

Automated detection of feeding strikes by larval fish using continuous high-speed digital video: a novel method to extract quantitative data from fast, sparse kinematic events

“…This framework has enabled researchers to understand the mechanistic and behavioral aspects of diverse behaviors such as jumping, flying, running, gliding, feeding and drinking in many animal species (e.g. Altshuler et al, 2004;Holzman et al, 2007;James et al, 2007;Reis et al, 2010;Ribak and Swallow, 2007;Toro et al, 2004 among many others).…”