Collaborative Research: Multisensory guidance of marine animal navigation and prey capture

合作研究：海洋动物导航和猎物捕获的多感官引导

• 批准号: 0843735
• 负责人: Allen Mensinger
• 金额: $ 13.74万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota Duluth
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-04-15 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0843735&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Multisensory; guidance; marine

Understanding how animals navigate under water is not only fascinating in its own right, it also contributes to instrumentation designs of underwater vehicles, robots and surface vessels, impacts management of fisheries, and helps protect the marine environment. Sharks have been chosen to demonstrate how they navigate. While they can not detect a drop of blood a mile away, as often stated, sharks do have impressive prey tracking capabilities. Sharks are important in fisheries worldwide and have been severely depleted in recent decades, often taken as unwanted by-catch in other fisheries. Yet, they are essential top predators needed to maintaining a healthy ecosystem. This research project will show how sharks use all their senses in hunting behavior, starting with initial prey detection, through tracking and locating, and ending with striking their prey. For more complete understanding, we compare a few shark species that appear to use their senses differently mostly because they specialize in different prey in different habitats. A team of experts in sensory and shark biology, using unique testing facilities in Massachusetts and Florida, has been assembled including graduate students being trained in the many technical approaches needed for work on live sharks. The research directly involves undergraduate and high school students and provides extensive outreach to other students of all ages and to the public in general. The accumulated knowledge should lead to a model of shark navigation and predation that can be used for the conservation of sharks, protection of humans, and the engineering design of underwater steering algorithms. The inevitable presentation of this research in future television programs and video documentaries will disseminate new knowledge to the public at large, both of sharks and of rigorous science.

了解动物如何在水下航行不仅本身就令人着迷，而且还有助于水下航行器、机器人和水面船只的仪器设计，影响渔业管理，并有助于保护海洋环境。 鲨鱼被选来展示它们如何导航。 正如人们常说的那样，虽然鲨鱼无法检测到一英里外的一滴血，但它们确实具有令人印象深刻的猎物追踪能力。 鲨鱼在世界各地的渔业中都很重要，但近几十年来已严重减少，通常被视为其他渔业中不需要的副渔获物。 然而，它们是维持健康生态系统所需的重要顶级捕食者。 该研究项目将展示鲨鱼如何在狩猎行为中使用所有感官，从最初的猎物检测开始，通过跟踪和定位，最后以攻击猎物结束。 为了更全面地理解，我们比较了几种鲨鱼物种，它们似乎使用不同的感官，主要是因为它们专门针对不同栖息地的不同猎物。 一支由感官和鲨鱼生物学专家组成的团队已经组建，他们使用马萨诸塞州和佛罗里达州独特的测试设施，其中包括接受活体鲨鱼研究所需的多种技术方法培训的研究生。 该研究直接涉及本科生和高中生，并向所有年龄段的其他学生和广大公众提供广泛的宣传。 积累的知识应该会产生鲨鱼导航和捕食模型，可用于保护鲨鱼、保护人类以及水下转向算法的工程设计。 这项研究不可避免地会出现在未来的电视节目和视频纪录片中，这将向广大公众传播关于鲨鱼和严谨科学的新知识。