Periodic Reporting for period 1 - C0PEP0D (Life and death of a virtual copepod in turbulence)
Período documentado: 2019-09-01 hasta 2021-02-28
The objective of the project is to decipher how planktonic copepods exploit hydrodynamic and chemical sensing to detect and track targets in turbulent flows.
Copepods are millimetric crustaceans that play a crucial role in marine ecosystems. They live in all seas and oceans and are thought to be the most abundant multi-cellular organism on the planet. Yet, copepods are blind. To detect preys, predators, and mates, copepods use hydrodynamic and chemical sensing (Kiørboe, 2010). How are they able to distinguish a meaningful signal in oceanic turbulence? Copepods being one of the greatest success stories of marine evolution, they likely evolved smart algorithms to process this sensing information. But today, these algorithms are poorly understood.
C0PEP0D aims at deciphering these algorithms by addressing three questions:
Q1: Mating. How do male copepods follow the pheromone trail left by females?
Q2: Finding. How do copepods use hydrodynamic signals to ‘see’?
Q3: Feeding. What are the best feeding strategies in turbulent flow?
Copepods are millimetric crustaceans that play a crucial role in marine ecosystems. They live in all seas and oceans and are thought to be the most abundant multi-cellular organism on the planet. Yet, copepods are blind. To detect preys, predators, and mates, copepods use hydrodynamic and chemical sensing (Kiørboe, 2010). How are they able to distinguish a meaningful signal in oceanic turbulence? Copepods being one of the greatest success stories of marine evolution, they likely evolved smart algorithms to process this sensing information. But today, these algorithms are poorly understood.
C0PEP0D aims at deciphering these algorithms by addressing three questions:
Q1: Mating. How do male copepods follow the pheromone trail left by females?
Q2: Finding. How do copepods use hydrodynamic signals to ‘see’?
Q3: Feeding. What are the best feeding strategies in turbulent flow?
The C0PEP0D project has started in Sept. 2019. Since then, two PhD students and two postdocs have been recruited. We are currently working on several publications that address the first results achieved on navigation in a turbulent environment and hydrodynamic signature at moderate Reynolds number.
The project will allow us to better understand the detecting and tracking skills of copepods, providing inspiration for artificial sensors.