Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS23 In Transition: Biomechanics of Sensory Perception (Disciplinary Connections)

Date: Thursday, February 15, 2001, Time: 2:15:00 PM

Location: Acoma/Zuni/Tesuque

Crimaldi, J, P, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, john.crimaldi@colorado.edu

Koseff, J, R, Stanford University, Stanford, USA, koseff@ce.stanford.edu

Koehl, M, R, University of California, Berkeley, USA, cnidaria@socrates.berkeley.edu

SIZE DOES MATTER: THE EFFECT OF SENSOR MORPHOLOGY AND KINEMATICS ON PERCEPTION

Odor plumes in turbulent benthic boundary layers contain spatial and temporal structure that results from the organized motion of the turbulence. This structural content contains imbedded information about the direction and distance to the location of the source. In fact, many aquatic and terrestrial animals use chemosensory perception to navigate through odor plumes by sensing the structure of the plume with sensory appendages. However, the morphology and kinematics of a sensory appendage itself alters the perceived spatial and temporal character of the ambient odor plume. In this study we use a virtual sensory appendage with varying size, shape, and motion characteristics to study the effect of sensor morphology and kinematics on the perceived information content in a plume. The virtual sensory appendage samples odorant structure from an experimental dataset of plume structure acquired within a turbulent boundary layer using a non-intrusive measurement technique. We report the effect of morphology and kinematics on basic plume structural parameters such as concentration variance, intermittency, and isotropy.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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