Meeting Abstract

S1-3.4  Friday, Jan. 4  Attack or attacked: The sensory and fluid mechanical constraints of copepod predator-prey interactions KIøRBOE, Thomas; Technical University of Denmark tk@aqua.dtu.dk

Most animals are both predators and prey. This dual position represents a fundamental dilemma because gathering food often leads to increased exposure to predators. The optimization of the trade-off between eating and not being eaten depends strongly on the sensing, feeding, and motility mechanisms of the parties involved. I here describe the mechanisms of sensing, predator escape, and prey capture in pelagic copepods. Copepods can remotely sense their predators and prey from hydromechanical and chemical cues, they can capture evasive prey in efficient attack strikes or sense and collect prey that are arriving in their feeding current, they have unparalleled escape performances (the ‘strongest animal in the world’) and they can propel themselves with unusually high efficiencies (propulsion efficiency > 95 %) while minimizing their hydrodynamic footprints. I will describe all this by means of high speed video, flow visualization, and simple fluid dynamical experiments and models. I will conclude by presenting a mechanistically underpinned model that predicts optimal foraging behaviors and rationalizes observed size scaling and magnitudes of zooplankton clearance rates.