Hydrodynamic role of substrate attachment in shaping the suspension‐feeding current created by the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata

Abstract

As in lamellibranch bivalves, individuals of the common Atlantic slippersnail Crepidula fornicata beat cilia on their gill filaments to produce a suspension-feeding current.Having only one shell and no siphons with which to direct water flow, however, individuals of C. fornicata must adhere to a solid substrate to facilitate normal feeding. Thus, what hydrodynamic role does substrate attachment play in producing, regulating, and directing the suspension-feeding current for this species? Here, a combined particle image velocimetry and computational fluid dynamics study was conducted to address this question. Three findings were obtained: (1) Juveniles of C. fornicata (shell length 6.0-10.6 mm) whose foot was attached to a solid surface generated a strong, fan-like exhalant current and an almost equally strong, convergent inhalant current, both being spatially well extended; (2) juveniles of C. fornicata

The swim-and-sink behaviour of copepods: a revisit to mechanical power requirement and a new hypothesis on function

“…The HSMIS was used to observe the upward swim-and-sink behaviour of Centropages sp., including the encounter and capture manoeuvre by the copepod toward diatom chains. The HSMIS approach has been described adequately in previous studies that used it to observe protists [27][28][29][30], copepod adults, copepodites and nauplii [31,32], and small benthic suspension feeders [33,34]. The optical set-up specific to this study consisted of an objective lens of 150 mm focal length and an infinity-corrected, long-working-distance microscope objective (4 × /0.10 18.5 mm working distance).…”