Buoyancy in Nautilus

Abstract

Since the pioneering efforts of Eric Denton and John Gilpin-Brown (1966), much has been learned about the buoyancy system of the chambered Nautilus. It seems timely, therefore, to evaluate critically what is known and not known about the buoyancy system of Nautilus, rather than merely to restate what has gone before. In particular, we will discuss what we see as the major outstanding questions on Nautilus buoyancy research and what we regard to be the more subtle and poorly understood aspects of buoyancy in Nautilus. We will try to make explicit the assumptions that were heretofore implicit in our own and in others' analyses and to present some new data on Nautilus buoyancy mechanisms.