Abstract
The ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus) exhibits an intricate skin color pattern made of monochromatic black and green skin scales, whose dynamics of color flipping are known to be well modeled by a stochastic cellular automaton. We show that the late-time probability distribution of the pattern corresponds to the canonical probability distribution of the antiferromagnetic Ising model and can be generated by dynamics different from the commonly-used Glauber. We comment on skin scale patterns generated by the Ising model on the triangular lattice in the low-temperature limit.
- Received 17 May 2021
- Accepted 16 December 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.048102
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Lizard Scale Patterns Described with Antiferromagnetic Model
Published 27 January 2022
The pattern of green and black scales on an ocellated lizard can be described with the two-parameter Ising model for antiferromagnetic systems.
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