Meeting Abstract
The recent development of predictive tools for particle capture has opened up new possibilities for the determination of rates of suspension feeding, larval settlement, pollination and sediment removal in aquatic ecosystems. Through the use of computational fluid dynamics simulations and existing experimental data, we demonstrate how the rate of contact between suspended particles and biological collectors is affected by system characteristics such as flow velocity, particle size and collector size. Within the broad parameter space of aquatic ecosystems, the dependence of contact rate on each of these characteristics is shown to be highly variable. The understanding of these dependences has served to reformulate some hypotheses of selection pressure on the physiology and ecology of aquatic organisms. Finally, the benefits and limitations of computational fluid dynamics tools in predicting rates of particle capture are discussed, with a focus on the new avenues of research suggested by these results.
