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

文蛤等底栖无脊椎动物通过悬浮、取食和呼吸产生的吸入性虹吸流动可直接影响底栖海洋生态系统的各种物理和化学过程。这一过程耗费大量能源，并影响个体的进食和生殖生物学。此外，在多个尺度上理解虹吸流动不仅被广泛用于解决其他水生生物的流场问题和交换过程，而且还直接影响到各种工程问题，如下水道设计。尽管这些流场在生物学中很重要，但在这一主题上进行的研究相对较少。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，发现与通常假设的结果完全不同。鉴于这些发现，PI建议在无生命的物理模型上测试他们的数值模拟结果，然后使用活的生物体来验证它们的准确性。所提出的数值模拟将检验和预测几个参数的影响，包括吸气虹吸管壁厚、虹吸管高度、呼出气流引起的扰动以及对环境流动的敏感性。预测最初将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，改善生态系统将集中研究五种悬浮式喂食器，每种都经过了广泛的研究，其中包括一种底栖虾、一种被囊类、一种软壳蚌、羊皮虫和一种管状双足类动物。这套物种将提供进食流量的广泛描述，因为每个喂养系统跨越几乎所有在产生虹吸流的动物身上观察到的雷诺数范围。这项研究的结果将改善我们目前对生物摄取流动对近床过程的影响的理解，例如有机和无机营养物质的垂直通量，这是底栖生态学的一个重要方面。直接交付的成果将包括经过验证的海洋底栖生物吸入剂流动的量化模型，将形式和功能联系起来，并详细说明操作的流体机械成本。PIS将与海洋科学教育卓越中心(COSEE)的工作人员合作，制作两个关于流体流动的教育网络研讨会。这一系列的网络研讨会面向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结合起来回答广泛的海洋学问题。这两个专业人员将继续进行跨学科科学方面的研究生培训，并将把拟议工作的实例纳入其本科生和研究生教学。

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.