The neuromechanics of natural behavior: Insights from jellyfish-fluid interactions

Recent technical breakthroughs allow for mechanistic studies of increasingly diverse organisms, making this an exciting time for comparative neuroscience. Marine organisms offer unique opportunities to examine how nervous systems are shaped by the physical constraints of an environment fundamentally different from our terrestrial experience. Here, we explore these differences in the context of jellyfish, focusing primarily on motor control. While body-environment interactions have long been recognized as critical in neuroscience, the deformable bodies and distributed nervous systems of jellyfish offer unique challenges. We emphasize how fluid dynamics simulations can be used to make predictions about control problems that nervous systems need to solve for efficient locomotion, illustrating the importance of properly understanding body mechanics and body-environment interactions when modeling and interpreting neural activity. Lastly, we highlight questions that arise due to the unique physics of jellyfish and their environment pertaining to scaling and behavioral organization.