The contralateral coordination of walking legs in the crayfish Astacus leptodactylus

Abstract

The coupling mechanisms which coordinate the movement of ipsilateral walking legs in the crayfish have been described in earlier investigations. Concerning the coupling between contralateral legs it was only known that these influences are weaker than those acting between ipsilateral legs. The nature of these coupling mechanisms between contralateral legs of the crayfish are investigated here by running left and right legs on separate walking belts at different speeds. The results show that coordination is performed by a phase-dependent shift of the anterior extreme position of the influenced leg. This backward shift leads to a shortening of both the return stroke and the following power stroke. As the coupling influence is only weak, several steps might be necessary to retain normal coordination after a disturbance. This corresponds to v. Holst's relative coordination. The influences act in both directions, from left to right and vice versa. However, one side may be more or less dominant. A gradient was found in the way that anterior leg pairs show less strong coordination than posterior legs. In some cases the coupling between diagonally neighbouring legs was found to be stronger than between contralateral legs of the same segment. The interpretation of this result is still open.