HR: 16:30h
AN: OS54A-03 [Abstracts]
TI: Smelling in a small world: the interaction of ambient flow and behaviorally-created flow
AU: Strickler, R
EM: "J Rudi Strickler"
AU: * Moore, P
EM: pmoore@bgsu.edu
AF: Bowling Green State University, Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green, Oh
43403, United States
AB:
The basis of many ecological interactions ultimately depends upon an organism's ability to
extract relevant spatial and temporal information about its environment. Information about an environment is
carried by sensory signals present within a habitat. Because sensory signals have varying physical properties,
different physical phenomena in habitats will set constraints upon the transmitted signals. As a result of this
physical constraint, organisms have evolved a variety of habitat-specific sensory systems and mechanisms to
gather ecological information Among the many sensory systems that organisms have evolved, chemical senses
are sources of ecological information for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic organisms. In particular, organisms in
the marine environment have evolved elaborate mechanisms to extract information from chemical signals. To
appreciate the difficulties associated with this behavioral task, it is imperative to understand the interaction
between a sensory signal and the physical constraints of an environment. For odor signals, these physical
processes are turbulent advection and dispersion. The purpose of this presentation is to review the set of
physical parameters that constrain or govern the transmission and movement of chemical signals within different
environments and review the various strategies that have evolved among organisms in order to effectively use
chemical signals to solve important behavioral and ecological tasks.
DE: 4817 Food webs, structure, and dynamics (0491)
DE: 4890 Zooplankton
DE: 4894 Instruments, sensors, and techniques
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting