Meeting Abstract

 

P1-39  Friday, Jan. 4 15:30 – 17:30  The Effect of Immersed Structures on Zooplankton Swimming OZALP, MK*; MILLER, LA; Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill mkoz@live.unc.edu

Zooplanktons are vulnerable to strong flows and currents, such as in storms and flood conditions, given their small size. Reefs, macrophytes, and other structures can provide shelter against wash out as these structures alter the flow field around them significantly. It is not clear how the protective aspects of such immersed structures depend on their volume fraction, arrangement, and flexibility, and it is also not clear how organismal size and swimming speed scale against wash out. We use Artemia, or brine shrimps, as a model organism given their hardiness. We then use both experimental and numerical approaches to quantify the effect of macrophyte density and arrangement on flow. As a simplification, we use 3D-printed arrays with cylindrical protrusions as an initial model of the macrophytes. Using 2D Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), the flow fields in the presence and absence of cylindrical arrays are measured. 3D immersed boundary simulations are then performed to resolve the flow fields around the cylindrical arrays, and the results are validated against PIV. Next, we inject nauplii within different arrays and for different background flow speeds. The distribution of Artemia over time is recorded with video. Finally, we compare the experimental results of Artemia distributions with an agent-based model that simulates the movement of plankton within the 3D flow fields produced by the immersed boundary simulations.