Meeting Abstract
Unsteady swimming is typically used by fish and other aquatic vertebrates during predator-prey interactions. Large fish are expected to eventually catch small fish if both predator and prey are swimming in a straight line. However, prey tend to perform frequent maneuvers and accelerations when under attack. In addition to providing some degree of unpredictability, this behavior may be advantageous to the prey because scaling relationships show that small fish have higher performance than large fish when unsteady swimming variables (i.e. maneuvering and accelerating) are considered. Some large predators possess morphological adaptations such as elongated bills and tails that can be maneuvered effectively, thus allowing them to overcome their potential disadvantage in unsteady swimming performance when attacking their evasive smaller prey. These body extensions can be moved more rapidly than the whole body itself, and are used by various large aquatic predators to facilitate prey capture. Large aquatic predators such as billfishes, killer whales and dolphins can reduce the disadvantage between predator and prey maneuverability by concentrating, disturbing and disorienting prey. This can result in alternatives to whole-body attacks on single prey, such as attacking as a group or the use of weapons (e.g. tails and bills) which can deal with a concentrated group of prey by slapping and slashing them and then consuming stunned and injured individuals. The use of body parts as weapons in large aquatic vertebrates will be discussed within the context of scaling of swimming performance and of predator-prey size ratios.
