CHARACTERIZATIONS OF NATURAL PATTERNS

Labyrinthine patterns are observed in systems as diverse as animal coa ts, slime mold colonies, fish scales, and cloud streets. However, even under well-controlled conditions, repetition of an experiment gives s tructures with vastly different details. A theoretical analysis of ''u niversal'' aspects of patterns requires a quantitative description tha t gives similar values for distinct configurations. We introduce a fun ction to characterize the ''disorder'' of labyrinthine patterns that i s the same for structures generated under identical control parameters . Furthermore, patterns with different visual characteristics are desc ribed by distinct functions.