Tiled Beauty: Functional Aesthetics in Biology

architecture, armadillos, arthropods, beauty, beehive, beeswax, biodiversity, biology, Biomimetics, butterfly wings, classification, compound eyes, Darwinism, design, Engineering, Evolution, False Messiah, function, functional needs, German Research Foundation, Gothic cathedrals, honeycomb, Intelligent Design, Jana Ciecierska-Holmes, Linnaean taxonomy, multifunctionality, Neil Thomas, phylogeny, PNAS Nexus, reptiles, scales, sunflowers, tessellated patterns, tessellation, tile shapes, tiles, tortoise shell
Tessellated patterns are surprisingly prevalent in biology. Are these forms necessary for function, or mere consequences of natural laws?  Source
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Diatoms, an Evolutionary Mystery, Come into Nano-Focus

archaea, bacteria, beauty, Blaise Pascal, Caltech, Coscinodiscus, Cristobal Vila, Current Biology, diatoms, electron microscope, Engineering, eukaryotes, frustules, Germany, God Hypothesis, Gothic cathedrals, Intelligent Design, Izabela Zgłobicka, Life Sciences, light microscope, Michael Gross, microbes, Nature by Numbers, Nature Scientific Reports, photosynthetic algae, Poland, purpose, Zachary Aitken
The jewels of the microbial world, when seen with new nano-scale imaging techniques, look like Gothic cathedrals. Source
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