Solutions to Parallel and Distributed Computing Problems: Lessons from Biological Sciences

1.5 SELECTED APPLICATIONS

1.5.1 Modeling Growth and Form in a Moving Fluid Using Synchronous Cellular Automata

The basic idea of modeling growth and form of marine sessile suspension feeders, as for example, sponges and stony corals [28, 29], is briefly discussed in the next section. The simulated growth forms will be only qualitatively discussed, as the more detailed quantitative measurements on, for example, the space-filling properties (expressed in fractal dimensions), centers of gravity of the simulated objects, and absorption measurements, are presented elsewhere [28, 29]. In the model both the parallelism present in physical environment (dispersion of nutrients through diffusion and flow) and the parallelism present in the growth process, will be exploited. The dispersion of nutrients will be modeled using the LBM discussed in Section 1.4.4, while the growth of the stony coral will be modeled using a probabilistic cellular automaton.

1.5.1.1 Biological Background

Many marine sessile suspension feeders from various taxonomic groups, as for example, sponges, hydrocorals, and stony corals, exhibit a strong morphological plasticity, which is in many cases related to the impact of hydrodynamics. The exposure to water movement represents one of the dominant environmental parameters. In a number of cases it is possible to arrange growth forms of sponges, hydrocorals, and stony corals along a gradient of the amount of water movement [27]. In the examples of stony corals, the growth ...