Nature's moisture harvesters: a comparative review

Nature has adapted different methods for surviving dry, arid, xeric conditions. It is the focus of this comparative review to pull together the relevant information gleaned from the literature that could be utilized to design moisture harvesting devices informed by biomimetics. Most water harvesting devices in current use are not informed by nature and those that do are usually based on a biomimetic principle that has been based on one species only. This review draws on the published literature to establish a list of species (animals (vertebrates/invertebrates) and plants) whose habitat is in mainly dry or arid regions and that are known to harvest airborne moisture. Key findings have been outlined and review comments and discussion set out. Following this, surface feature convergences have been identified, namely hexagonal microstructures, groove-like and cone-like geometries. This has been coupled with direction of water flow that is driven by surface energy. As far as the authors are aware, this convergent evolution has not been brought together in this manner before. In the future this information could be translated into an engineered device for collecting water from airborne sources.

[1]  F. E. Lioyd.  THE ARTIFICIAL INDUCTION OF LEAF FORMATION IN THE OCOTILLO , 1906 .

[2]  H. Craig.  Isotopic Variations in Meteoric Waters , 1961, Science.

[3]  David Quéré,et al.  Superhydrophobic states , 2003, Nature materials.

[4]  W. Barthlott,et al.  Quantitative assessment to the structural basis of water repellency in natural and technical surfaces. , 2003, Journal of experimental botany.

[5]  Rudolf Schmid,et al.  The Great Cacti: Ethnobotany and Biogeography , 2007 .

[6]  J. Sarsour,et al.  Leaf surface structures enable the endemic Namib desert grass Stipagrostis sabulicola to irrigate itself with fog water , 2012, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[7]  R. Cerbino.  Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves , 2006 .

[8]  M. Seely,et al.  Ecophysiology of atmospheric moisture in the Namib Desert , 2008 .

[9]  Patrick Van Damme,et al.  PLANT ECOLOGY OF THE NAMIB DESERT , 1991 .

[10]  Daniel Beysens,et al.  The formation of dew , 1995 .

[11]  Lei Zhai,et al.  Patterned superhydrophobic surfaces: toward a synthetic mimic of the Namib Desert beetle. , 2006, Nano letters.

[12]  Daniel Beysens,et al.  From Droplet Growth to Film Growth on a Heterogeneous Surface: Condensation Associated with a Wettability Gradient , 1995 .

[13]  Daniel Beysens,et al.  Coalescence of sessile drops , 2002, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[14]  Lei Jiang,et al.  A multi-structural and multi-functional integrated fog collection system in cactus , 2012, Nature Communications.

[15]  Keith A. Christian,et al.  Condensation onto the Skin as a Means for Water Gain by Tree Frogs in Tropical Australia , 2011, The American Naturalist.

[16]  William J. Hamilton,et al.  Fog collection by Namib Desert beetles : correspondence , 2003 .

[17]  Marie Dacke,et al.  Fog-basking behaviour and water collection efficiency in Namib Desert Darkling beetles , 2010, Frontiers in Zoology.

[18]  D. Quéré,et al.  Drops on a conical wire , 2004, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[19]  Edward C. Stone,et al.  Dew as an Ecological Factor: I. A Review of the Literature , 1957 .

[20]  S. Dietrich,et al.  Mesoscopic analysis of Gibbs' criterion for sessile nanodroplets on trapezoidal substrates. , 2011, The Journal of chemical physics.

[21]  W. Barthlott,et al.  Superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic plant surfaces: an inspiration for biomimetic materials , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[22]  W. Auffenberg,et al.  A note on the drinking habits of some land tortoises , 1963 .

[23]  W. Baumgartner,et al.  Moisture harvesting and water transport through specialized micro-structures on the integument of lizards , 2011, Beilstein journal of nanotechnology.

[24]  J. McGettrick,et al.  Mimicking a Stenocara beetle's back for microcondensation using plasmachemical patterned superhydrophobic-superhydrophilic surfaces. , 2007, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[25]  Kazuhito Hashimoto,et al.  Recent Studies on Super-Hydrophobic Films , 2001 .

[26]  Jürgen Rühe,et al.  Mimicking the stenocara beetle--dewetting of drops from a patterned superhydrophobic surface. , 2008, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[27]  Cheng-Chung Chang,et al.  A Drop Pinned by a Designed Patch on a Tilted Superhydrophobic Surface: Mimicking Desert Beetle , 2012 .

[28]  Dean J Tantillo,et al.  Changes in charge distribution, molecular volume, accessible surface area and electronic structure along the reaction coordinate for a carbocationic triple shift rearrangement of relevance to diterpene biosynthesis. , 2012, The journal of physical chemistry. A.

[29]  T. Dawson.  Fog in the California redwood forest: ecosystem inputs and use by plants , 1998, Oecologia.

[30]  Abraham Marmur,et al.  Wetting on Hydrophobic Rough Surfaces: To Be Heterogeneous or Not To Be? , 2003 .

[31]  Xavier Glaudas,et al.  Rain-Harvesting by the Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchellii pyrrhus) , 2009 .

[32]  W. Hamilton,et al.  Fog basking by the Namib Desert beetle, Onymacris unguicularis , 1976, Nature.

[33]  E Drabble,et al.  The Relation between the Osmotic Strength of Cell Sap in Plants and their Physical Environment. , 1907, The Biochemical journal.

[34]  Marie Dacke,et al.  Animal or Plant: Which Is the Better Fog Water Collector? , 2012, PloS one.

[35]  Kripa K. Varanasi,et al.  Spatial control in the heterogeneous nucleation of water , 2009 .

[36]  A. Parker,et al.  Water capture by a desert beetle , 2001, Nature.

[37]  Innes C Cuthill,et al.  The influence of a hot environment on parental cooperation of a ground-nesting shorebird, the Kentish plover Charadrius alexandrinus , 2010, Frontiers in Zoology.

[38]  Jin Zhai,et al.  Directional water collection on wetted spider silk , 2010, Nature.

[39]  P. J. BENTLEY,et al.  Uptake of Water by the Lizard, Moloch horridus , 1962, Nature.

[40]  Michael J. Savage,et al.  Fog-water collection for community use , 2014 .

[41]  Carl Gans,et al.  The Water-collecting Mechanism of Moloch horridus Re-examined , 1982 .

[42]  P. Gennes,et al.  Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena , 2004 .

[43]  R. N. Wenzel.  RESISTANCE OF SOLID SURFACES TO WETTING BY WATER , 1936 .

[44]  C. N. Slobodchikoff,et al.  A Function of the Subelytral Chamber of Tenebrionid Beetles , 1981 .

[45]  Exequiel Ezcurra,et al.  The narrow-leaf syndrome: a functional and evolutionary approach to the form of fog-harvesting rosette plants , 2007, Oecologia.

[46]  David Quéré,et al.  Slippy and sticky microtextured solids , 2003 .

[47]  A. Cassie,et al.  Wettability of porous surfaces , 1944 .

[48]  A. Ditta.  How helpful is nanotechnology in agriculture? , 2012 .

[49]  James B. Ingwersen,et al.  FOG DRIP, WATER YIELD, AND TIMBER HARVESTING IN THE BULL RUN MUNICIPAL WATERSHED, OREGON , 1985 .

[50]  Neils Bolwig,et al.  Aspects of animal ecology in the Kalahari , 1958 .

[51]  Anita Roth-Nebelsick,et al.  Efficient fog harvesting by Stipagrostis sabulicola (Namib dune bushman grass) , 2010 .

[52]  Wade C. Sherbrooke,et al.  Integumental water movement and rate of water ingestion during rain harvesting in the Texas horned lizard, Phrynosoma cornutum , 2004 .

[53]  Laura Schweitzer,et al.  Environmental Biology Of Agaves And Cacti , 2016 .

[54]  George M. Whitesides,et al.  How to Make Water Run Uphill , 1992, Science.

[55]  M. Seely,et al.  Irregular fog as a water source for desert dune beetles , 1979, Oecologia.