Collaborative Research: A framework to characterize inhalant siphon flows of aquatic benthos

蛤等底栖无脊椎动物通过悬浮摄食和呼吸作用产生的吸入虹吸流可直接影响底栖海洋生态系统的广泛物理和化学过程。这一过程耗费能量，影响个体的摄食和生殖生物学。此外，了解虹吸流在多个尺度上被广泛使用，不仅解决其他水生生物和交换过程的流场问题，但对各种工程问题，如设计下水道有直接的影响。尽管这些流场在生物学中的重要性，相对较少的研究已经进行了关于这个主题。在这项研究中，PI模拟了几个重要的海底海洋虹吸入口外的流动，并发现了与通常假设的结果完全不同的结果。鉴于这些发现，PI建议在无生命的物理模型上测试其数值模拟的结果，然后使用活生物体验证其准确性。建议的数值模拟将检查和预测的影响，包括吸入虹吸管壁厚，虹吸高度，呼出气流引起的干扰，和环境流量的敏感性的几个参数。预测将首先通过使用无生命的模拟模型进行测试。为了提供一个广泛的生态框架，PI将集中在五个模型悬浮饲料，其中每一个都进行了广泛的研究，包括一种底栖虾，一个被囊动物，一个软壳蛤，羊皮虫，和一个管居住的端足类动物。该套件物种将提供对进气流量的广泛描述，因为每个饲喂系统几乎涵盖了在产生虹吸流的动物中观察到的所有雷诺数范围。这项研究的结果将提高我们目前的理解有机物摄入量对近床过程的影响，如有机和无机营养盐的垂直通量，底栖生态学的一个重要方面。直接交付的成果将包括海洋底栖生物吸入流的经验证的定量模型，将形式和功能联系起来，并详细说明作业的流体机械成本。PI将与海洋科学教育卓越中心（COSEE）的工作人员合作，制作一对关于流体流动的教育网络研讨会。这一系列网络研讨会的目标是高中教师和大学教授，并将使用概念图来演示如何将数学，生物学和流体动力学整合起来回答广泛的海洋学问题。这两个PI将继续在跨学科科学研究生培训，并将纳入他们的本科和研究生教学拟议的工作的例子。

The inhalant siphon flows produced by benthic invertebrates such as clams through suspension feeding and respiration can directly affect a wide range of physical and chemical processes in benthic marine ecosystems. This process is energetically costly and influences the feeding and reproductive biology of the individual. Moreover, understanding siphon flows at multiple scales are widely used not only to address questions of flow fields for other aquatic organisms and exchange processes, but have direct impacts on a variety of engineering problems such as designing sewers. Despite the importance of these flow fields in biology, relatively little research has been conducted on this topic. For this study, the PIs have modeled the flow outside the siphon entrance of several important benthic marine and have found radically different results from those commonly assumed. Given these findings, the PIs propose to test the results of their numerical simulation on inanimate physical models, and then verify their accuracy using live organisms. The proposed numerical modeling will examine and predict effects of several parameters including inhalant siphon wall thickness, siphon height, disturbances caused by exhalant flows, and sensitivity to ambient flows. Predictions will be initially tested by using inanimate analog models. To provide a broad ecological framework, the PIs will then focus on five model suspension feeders, each of which have been extensively studied, and include a species of benthic shrimp, a tunicate, a soft shelled clam, the parchment worm, and a tube dwelling amphipod. This suite species will provide a broad description of the intake flow as each feeding system span nearly all the range of Reynolds numbers observed in animals that produce siphon flows. The results of this study will improve our current understanding the effects of organismal intake flows on near bed processes such as vertical fluxes of organic and inorganic nutrients, an important aspect of benthic ecology. Direct deliverables will include verified quantitative models of inhalant flows of marine benthos, connecting form and function and detailing fluid mechanical costs of operation. The PIs will partner with the staff of Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) to produce a pair of educational webinars on fluid flows. This series of webinars are targeted toward high school teachers and university professors, and will use concept maps to demonstrate how mathematics, biology, and fluid dynamics can be integrated to answer broad oceanographic questions. Both PIs will continue graduate training in interdisciplinary science and will incorporate examples of the proposed work in their undergraduate and graduate teaching.