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Developmental biology

How the lizard gets its speckled scales

Nature volume 544, pages 170–171 (2017)Cite this article

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Can a reptile compute? In one species of lizard, Timon lepidus, the colour and pattern of its scales evolve in a manner akin to a discrete rule-based computation called a cellular automaton. See Letter p.173

Originally conceived in the 1940s, a cellular automaton3,4 is a system of spatially discrete but interconnected units that switch between different states depending on their own state and the states of their neighbours. Cellular automata have been used to probe theoretical concepts in computer science (such as a universal Turing machine5), study complex patterns in nature6, produce startling moving patterns based on simple rules (the 'Game of Life'7) and model biological systems8 and a panoply of discrete systems that are too numerous to list.

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Figure 1: The ocellated lizard.

A, FLPA/ALAMY; B, IAN WATT/ALAMY

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leah Edelstein-Keshet is in the Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z2, Canada.,

    Leah Edelstein-Keshet

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  1. Leah Edelstein-Keshet
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Correspondence to Leah Edelstein-Keshet.

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Edelstein-Keshet, L. How the lizard gets its speckled scales. Nature 544, 170–171 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/544170a

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