COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Signal Recognition by Zooplankton

对于许多动物来说，通过空气或水传播的振动提供了有关当地三维环境的信息。 通常有极其复杂的机械感觉系统整合极其复杂的刺激场。 这个合作研究项目利用一种小型水生甲壳动物（桡足类）作为一种新型模型系统，可以认为它比其他分析中使用的昆虫和大型甲壳动物简单得多。 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，动物在触角上产生一个进食电流。 该电流在开放中具有一些局部湍流，但被转换为穿过天线的平滑层流场。 微尺度流体动力学、受体神经生理学和行为学研究被用来阐明将自然信号的3-D信息转换为神经信号的机制，以及这种小而复杂的机械感觉系统检测到的诸如进食或逃离游泳捕食者的行为的基础。 结果将是重要的理解3-D处理mechanosensory系统，并有潜在的影响超出神经科学生物海洋学，因为桡足类在食物网的重要性，并对生物传感器和机器人传感技术的设计的潜在影响。

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.