Hydrodynamics of Benthic Macrophytes in Waves Versus Currents

流动的水可以赶走固着的海洋生物。这种物理干扰在构建底栖动物群落时可能很重要。固着生物的硬度范围从坚硬的珊瑚到柔韧的大型藻类。这项研究的目的是研究平面固着生物(例如许多大型植物和无脊椎动物群体)的弯曲刚度和大小如何影响它们在单向流和波浪(振荡流)中所经历的水动力。利用单向和振荡流槽中的物理模型进行的实验将系统地量化生物体的大小和硬度与力以及相对于生物体表面的局部水流速度的关系。这些实验将通过对真实的大型藻类和模型进行类似的现场测量来补充。通过研究结壳附生苔藓虫和它们僵硬的藻类宿主之间的机械相互作用，将探索大小、硬度和水动力之间关系的生物学后果的一个例子。这项研究意义重大，因为它将提供关于固着生物在海浪和海流席卷生境中易受物理干扰的大小和灵活性后果的基本规则。

Moving water can dislodge sessile marine organisms. Such physical disturbance can be important in structuring benthic communities. Sessile organisms range in stiffness from rigid corals to flexible macroalgae. The object of this investigation is to study how the flexural stiffness and size of planar, sessile organism (e.g. many macrophytes and invertebrate colonies) affect the hydrodynamic forces they experience in unidirectional currents and in waves (oscillating flow). Experiments using physical models in unidirectional and oscillating flow tanks will systematically quantify the relationship of an organism's size and stiffness to force and to local water velocities relative to the organism's surfaces. These experiments will be complemented by similar field measurements on real macroalgae and models. An example of the biological consequences of the relationship between size, stiffness, and hydrodynamic force will be explored by investigating the mechanical interactions between encrusting epiphytic bryozoans and the algal hosts they stiffen. This study is significant because it will provide basic rules about the consequences of size and flexibility to the vulnerability of sessile organisms to physical disturbance in wave-swept versus current-swept habitats.