Measuring and recreating hydrodynamic environments at biologically relevant scales
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Marine communities are fundamentally shaped by water motion, which provides many essential functions for a wide variety of marine organisms, such as gamete fertilization, transportation, and food and nutrient delivery. However, it often remains challenging to directly measure how individual organisms are affected by their immediate flow environments. Water motion in marine habitats is often dynamic and unpredictable, so average velocity measurements are unlikely to adequately capture the environment at biologically relevant scales. Furthermore, many organisms (e.g., plankton) are small (≤1mm), which limits potentially available techniques. Finally, the physical harshness of some environments, such as wave-swept shores, further constrains the number of viable tools. To address these challenges, I have developed several novel techniques to both measure and recreate environmental water motion at very fine temporal and spatial scales. First, I designed and manufactured a field-deployable flow sensor capable of measuring water velocities in the rocky intertidal zone at scales relevant to settling spores and larvae. I found that high water velocities (> 2m/s) can occur often (more than once per minute) even at heights just 0.250mm above the substrate. A larva attached to the substrate may find shelter from these peak velocities by hiding behind local topography or by settling in the right tidal conditions. Second, I built a wave chamber capable of replicating the extreme flows found in the intertidal zone and recorded adult barnacles feeding in these flows. I observed that barnacles are able to feed in high water velocities (> 1m/s), and that their feeding rates may potentially be independent of wave velocity. Finally, I measured flow patterns on the Great Barrier Reef at scales relevant to settling coral larvae, and then exposed coral larvae to a replication of these flow patterns in a lab setting. I found that because coral larvae are weak swimmers compared to their ambient flow environment, they are unable to affect their trajectories in even benign flows. Thus, these coral larvae require turbulence to deposit them onto the substrate. The studies in this thesis explore several ways in which marine organisms directly interact with their hydrodynamic environments, and how their performances during these interactions can potentially shape the distributions we observe in the field.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Hata, Tom | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology. | |
| Primary advisor | Denny, Mark W, 1951- | |
| Thesis advisor | Denny, Mark W, 1951- | |
| Thesis advisor | Goldbogen, Jeremy | |
| Thesis advisor | Somero, George N | |
| Thesis advisor | Watanabe, James Minoru | |
| Advisor | Goldbogen, Jeremy | |
| Advisor | Somero, George N | |
| Advisor | Watanabe, James Minoru |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Tom Hata. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Tom Hata
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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