COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Signal Recognition by Zooplankton

对于许多动物来说，通过空气或水传递的振动提供了关于当地三维环境的信息。通常有非常复杂的机械感觉系统集成了极其复杂的刺激场。这个合作研究项目使用了一种小型水生甲壳类动物--桡足类动物，作为一种新的模型系统，可以认为比其他分析中使用的昆虫和大型甲壳类动物简单得多。桡足类动物的大脑只有不到1000个神经元，生活在一个简单的流动环境中，动物在触角上产生馈电。这种电流在开放时有一些局部湍流，但在天线上转化为平坦的层流流场。微尺度流体动力学、感受器神经生理学和行为研究被用来阐明将自然信号的三维信息转化为神经信号的机制，以及通过这个小型但复杂的机械传感系统检测到的摄食或逃离游动的捕食者等行为的基础。研究结果对于理解机械传感系统中的3-D过程将是重要的，由于桡足类在食物链中的重要性，以及对生物传感器和机器人传感技术的设计的潜在影响，这一结果可能会超出神经科学对生物海洋学的影响。

For many animals, vibrations transmitted by air or water provide information about the local three-dimensional environment. Often there are extremely complex mechanosensory systems integrating extremely complex stimulus fields. This collaborative research project exploits a small aquatic crustacean, a copepod, as a novel model system that can be considered much simpler than the insects and large crustaceans used in other analyses. The copepod brain has fewer than 1000 neurons and lives in a simple flow environment where the animal creates a feeding current across the antennae. This current has some local turbulence in the open, but is converted to a smooth laminar flow field across the antenna. Microscale hydrodynamics, receptor neurophysiology and behavioral studies are used to clarify the mechanisms that transduce the 3-D information of natural signals into a neural signal, and underlie behavior such as feeding or escape from swimming predators detected by this small but sophisticated mechanosensory system. Results will be important for understanding 3-D processing in mechanosensory systems, and there is potential impact beyond neuroscience to biological oceanography because of the importance of copepods in the food web, and potential impact on the design of biosensors and robotic sensory technology.