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This paper has no abstract; this is the first paragraph. Autotomy is the active shedding of a body part which occurs in a variety of emergency situations including attacks by predators (Stasek, 1967; McVean, 1975; Maginnis, 2006). The immediate advantage of autotomy – surviving an otherwise deadly attack – comes at a price, which may include physical, energetic, behavioural and reproductive costs (Cooper, 2003; Maginnis, 2006). While the evolutionary and ecological consequences of autotomy have been studied most thoroughly in lizards (Clause & Capaldi, 2006; Bateman & Fleming, 2009), the phenomenon also is known from numerous invertebrate taxa, where it …

The study of plant mutants with twisting growth in axial organs, which normally grow straight in the wild-type, is expected to improve our understanding of the interplay among microtubules, cellulose biosynthesis, cell wall structure, and organ biomechanics that control organ growth and morphogenesis. However, geometric constraints based on symplastic growth and the consequences of these geometric constraints concerning interpretations of twisted-organ phenotypes are currently underestimated. Symplastic growth, a fundamental concept in plant developmental biology, is characterized by coordinated growth of adjacent cells based on their connectivity through cell walls. This growth behavior implies that in twisting axial organs, all cell …