Meeting Abstract
Many animals rely on gathering information from their environments by capturing chemical signals (odors) from environmental fluids. Odor capture is commonly accomplished in aquatic crustaceans and insects with arrays of hair-like chemosensory sensilla. The arrangement of sensilla in these arrays differ broadly between animals living in air and water. The physical properties between air and water also differ, including density, viscosity, and the diffusion rates of odorant molecules. In this study, a computational advection-diffusion model of odor capture by a hypothetical sensilla array was used to determine how the physical differences of air and water affect the morphology of sensilla arrays. We use this model to explore the space associated with three parameters characterizing the arrangement and kinematics of sensilla arrays (gap-width-to-diameter ratio, Reynolds number, angle of the array with respect to flow). Through uncertainty analysis of the model, we find that there are should be distinct signals in the variance of these parameters in aquatic and terrestrial animals.
