Hyperdisordered Cell Packing on a Growing Surface

Abstract

While the physics of disordered packing in nongrowing systems is well understood, unexplored phenomena can emerge when packing takes place in growing domains. We study the arrangements of pigment cells (chromatophores) on squid skin as a biological example of a packed system on an expanding surface. We find that relative density fluctuations in cell numbers grow with spatial scale. We term this behavior “hyperdisordered,” in contrast with hyperuniform behavior in which relative fluctuations tend to zero at large scales. We find that hyperdisordered scaling, akin to that of a critical system, is quantitatively reproduced by a model in which hard disks are randomly inserted in a homogeneously growing surface. In addition, we find that chromatophores increase in size during animal development but maintain a stationary size distribution. The physical mechanisms described in our work may apply to a broad class of growing dense systems. Published by the American Physical Society 2025