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令人着迷，还有助于水下机器人、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。鲨鱼被选为演示它们如何导航的对象。正如人们经常说的那样，鲨鱼在一英里之外探测不到一滴血，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很重要，近几十年来已严重枯竭，在其他渔业中往往被视为不受欢迎的副渔获物。然而，它们是维持健康生态系统所必需的顶级捕食者。这个研究项目将展示鲨鱼如何在狩猎行为中使用所有的感官，从最初的猎物检测开始，通过跟踪和定位，最后到攻击猎物。为了更全面地理解，我们比较了几种鲨鱼，它们似乎使用感官的方式不同，主要是因为它们擅长在不同的栖息地捕食不同的猎物。利用马萨诸塞州和佛罗里达州独特的测试设施，已经组建了一个感官和鲨鱼生物学专家团队，其中包括正在接受活体鲨鱼工作所需许多技术方法培训的研究生。这项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一般公众提供广泛的宣传。积累的知识应该会导致一个鲨鱼导航和捕食的模型，可以用于保护鲨鱼，保护人类，以及水下转向算法的工程设计。这项研究将不可避免地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有关鲨鱼和严谨科学的新知识。