Meeting Abstract
Larvaceans, a free-swimming tunicate, are found throughout the world’s oceans. They filter their food (e.g. small plankton, detritus, particulates) by secreting complex house structures made of mucus. Once the filtration structures become clogged, larvaceans abandon the house and swim freely to another location before generating another mucus house. Estimates indicate that discarded mucus houses, which are abandoned by larvaceans once they become clogged, are responsible for one-third of the particulate transported to the bottom of Monterey Bay in Central California. Here we conduct a study of an undescribed larvacean, Bathocordaeus sp. (Tunicata: Larvacea), to examine their free-swimming and in-house behavior, and how changes in their body kinematics may alter fluid interactions. High-definition videos captured by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in Monterey Bay from 2003 to present were analyzed to extract the kinematics of larvacean tail motion during these two distinct behaviors. Using in-house Matlab algorithms, we reveal significant differences in stroke dynamics as traveling waves propagate along the larvacean tail. These kinematic differences may have important implications for swimming performance and fluid filtration rates through larvacean mucus houses.
