Meeting Abstract
The kinematics of aquatic locomotion in elongate, eel-like vertebrates has received considerable attention since the pioneering work of Sir James Gray in 1933. In recent decades, the body of research focusing on eel-like locomotion suggests collectively that this mode of locomotion is highly variable with respect to midline kinematic parameters. In this study, we summarize these patterns and add new insights concerning propulsive wavelength and wave speed. Synthesizing data from previous work with new kinematic analysis of hundreds of thousands of waveforms over a range of routine, steady swimming speeds from two eel-like swimmers, the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) and ropefish (Erpetoichthys calabaricus), and one subcarangiform swimmer, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), we show that there may be novel canonical patterns of eel-like swimming that set this mode apart from other modes of aquatic undulatory locomotion. Specifically, our dataset and data from previous studies of eel-like swimmers, indicate that eel-like swimming may be defined by rostocaudal gradients of increasing propulsive wave speed and decreasing propulsive wavelength. In contrast, a subcarangiform mode, as represented by the rainbow trout, is defined by a rostrocaudal gradients of decreasing wave speed and increasing wavelength.
