Numerical Simulation of Self-Propelled Steady Jet Propulsion at Intermediate Reynolds Numbers: Effects of Orifice Size on Animal Jet Propulsion

Most marine jet-propelled animals have low swimming efficiencies and relatively small jet orifices. Motivated by this, the present computational fluid dynamics study simulates the flow for a jet-propelled axisymmetric body swimming steadily at intermediate Reynolds numbers of order 1–1000. Results show that swimming-imposed flow field, drag coefficients, swimming efficiencies, and performance index (a metric comparing swimming speeds sustained by differently sized orifices ejecting the same volume flow rate) all depend strongly on orifice size, and orifice size affects the configuration of oppositely signed body vorticity and jet vorticity, thereby affecting wake and efficiency. As orifice size decreases, efficiencies decrease considerably, while performance index increases substantially, suggesting that, for a given jet volume flow rate, a smaller orifice supports faster swimming than a larger one does, albeit at reduced efficiency. These results support the notion that most jet-propelled animals having relatively small jet orifices may be an adaptation to deal with the physical constraint of limited total volume of water available for jetting, while needing to compete for fast swimming. Finally, jet orifice size is discussed regarding the role of jet propulsion in jet-propelled animal ecology, particularly for salps that use two relatively large siphons to respectively draw in and expel water.

Cool your jets: biological jet propulsion in marine invertebrates

Pulsatile jet propulsion is a common swimming mode used by a diverse array of aquatic taxa from chordates to cnidarians. This mode of locomotion has interested both biologists and engineers for over a century. A central issue to understanding the important features of jet-propelling animals is to determine how the animal interacts with the surrounding fluid. Much of our knowledge of aquatic jet propulsion has come from simple theoretical approximations of both propulsive and resistive forces. Although these models and basic kinematic measurements have contributed greatly, they alone cannot provide the detailed information needed for a comprehensive, mechanistic overview of how jet propulsion functions across multiple taxa, size scales and through development. However, more recently, novel experimental tools such as high-speed 2D and 3D particle image velocimetry have permitted detailed quantification of the fluid dynamics of aquatic jet propulsion. Here, we provide a comparative analysis of a variety of parameters such as efficiency, kinematics and jet parameters, and review how they can aid our understanding of the principles of aquatic jet propulsion. Research on disparate taxa allows comparison of the similarities and differences between them and contributes to a more robust understanding of aquatic jet propulsion.

Squids use multiple escape jet patterns throughout ontogeny

Throughout their lives, squids are both predators and prey for a multitude of animals, many of which are at the top of ocean food webs, making them an integral component of the trophic structure of marine ecosystems. The escape jet, which is produced by the rapid expulsion of water from the mantle cavity through a funnel, is central to a cephalopod's ability to avoid predation throughout its life. Although squid undergo morphological and behavioral changes and experience remarkably different Reynolds number regimes throughout their development, little is known about the dynamics and propulsive efficiency of escape jets throughout ontogeny. We examine the hydrodynamics and kinematics of escape jets in squid throughout ontogeny using 2D/3D velocimetry and high-speed videography. All life stages of squid produced two escape jet patterns: (1) 'escape jet I' characterized by short rapid pulses resulting in vortex ring formation and (2) 'escape jet II' characterized by long high-volume jets, often with a leading-edge vortex ring. Paralarvae exhibited higher propulsive efficiency than adult squid during escape jet ejection, and propulsive efficiency was higher for escape jet I than escape jet II in juveniles and adults. These results indicate that although squid undergo major ecological transitions and morphology changes from paralarvae to adults, all life stages demonstrate flexibility in escape jet responses and produce escape jets of surprisingly high propulsive efficiency.This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.

Swimming kinematics and hydrodynamics of barnacle larvae throughout development

Changes in size strongly influence organisms' ecological performances. For aquatic organisms, they can transition from viscosity- to inertia-dominated fluid regimes as they grow. Such transitions are often associated with changes in morphology, swimming speed and kinematics. Barnacles do not fit into this norm as they have two morphologically distinct planktonic larval phases that swim differently but are of comparable sizes and operate in the same fluid regime (Reynolds number 100-101). We quantified the hydrodynamics of the rocky intertidal stalked barnacle Capitulum mitella from the nauplius II to cyprid stage and examined how kinematics and size increases affect its swimming performance. Cyprids beat their appendages in a metachronal wave to swim faster, more smoothly, and with less backwards slip per beat cycle than did all naupliar stages. Micro-particle image velocimetry showed that cyprids generated trailing viscous vortex rings that pushed water backwards for propulsion, contrary to the nauplii's forward suction current for particle capture. Our observations highlight that zooplankton swimming performance can shift via morphological and kinematic modifications without a significant size increase. The divergence in ecological functions through ontogeny in barnacles and the removal of feeding requirement likely contributed to the evolution of the specialized, taxonomically unique cyprid phase.

Naut Your Everyday Jellyfish Model: Exploring How Tentacles and Oral Arms Impact Locomotion

Jellyfish are majestic, energy-efficient, and one of the oldest species that inhabit the oceans. It is perhaps the second item, their efficiency, that has captivated scientists for decades into investigating their locomotive behavior. Yet, no one has specifically explored the role that their tentacles and oral arms may have on their potential swimming performance. We perform comparative in silico experiments to study how tentacle/oral arm number, length, placement, and density affect forward swimming speeds, cost of transport, and fluid mixing. An open source implementation of the immersed boundary method was used (IB2d) to solve the fully coupled fluid–structure interaction problem of an idealized flexible jellyfish bell with poroelastic tentacles/oral arms in a viscous, incompressible fluid. Overall tentacles/oral arms inhibit forward swimming speeds, by appearing to suppress vortex formation. Nonlinear relationships between length and fluid scale (Reynolds Number) as well as tentacle/oral arm number, density, and placement are observed, illustrating that small changes in morphology could result in significant decreases in swimming speeds, in some cases by upwards of 80–90% between cases with or without tentacles/oral arms.

A novel mechanism of mixing by pulsing corals

The dynamic pulsation of xeniid corals is one of the most fascinating phenomena observed in coral reefs. We quantify for the first time the flow near the tentacles of these soft corals, the active pulsations of which are thought to enhance their symbionts' photosynthetic rates by up to an order of magnitude. These polyps are approximately 1 cm in diameter and pulse at frequencies between approximately 0.5 and 1 Hz. As a result, the frequency-based Reynolds number calculated using the tentacle length and pulse frequency is on the order of 10 and rapidly decays as with distance from the polyp. This introduces the question of how these corals minimize the reversibility of the flow and bring in new volumes of fluid during each pulse. We estimate the Péclet number of the bulk flow generated by the coral as being on the order of 100-1000 whereas the flow between the bristles of the tentacles is on the order of 10. This illustrates the importance of advective transport in removing oxygen waste. Flow measurements using particle image velocimetry reveal that the individual polyps generate a jet of water with positive vertical velocities that do not go below 0.1 cm s^-1 and with average volumetric flow rates of approximately 0.71 cm³ s^-1 Our results show that there is nearly continual flow in the radial direction towards the polyp with only approximately 3.3% back flow. 3D numerical simulations uncover a region of slow mixing between the tentacles during expansion. We estimate that the average flow that moves through the bristles of the tentacles is approximately 0.03 cm s^-1 The combination of nearly continual flow towards the polyp, slow mixing between the bristles, and the subsequent ejection of this fluid volume into an upward jet ensures the polyp continually samples new water with sufficient time for exchange to occur.

Enhanced transport of nutrients powered by microscale flows of the self-spinning dinoflagellate Symbiodinium sp

The metabolism of a living organism (e.g. bacteria, algae, zooplankton) requires a continuous uptake of nutrients from the surrounding environment. However, within local spatial scales, nutrients are quickly used up under dense concentrations of organisms. Here, we report that self-spinning dinoflagellates Symbiodinium sp. (clade E) generate a microscale flow that mitigates competition and enhances the uptake of nutrients from the surrounding environment. Our experimental and theoretical results reveal that this incessant active behavior enhances transport by approximately 80-fold when compared with Brownian motion in living fluids. We found that the tracer ensemble probability density function for displacement is time-dependent, but consists of a Gaussian core and robust exponential tails (so-called non-Gaussian diffusion). This can be explained by interactions of far-field Brownian motions and a near-field entrainment effect along with microscale flows. The contribution of exponential tails sharply increases with algal density, and saturates at a critical density, implying a trade-off between aggregated benefit and negative competition for the spatially self-organized cells. Our work thus shows that active motion and migration of aquatic algae play key roles in diffusive transport and should be included in theoretical and numerical models of physical and biogeochemical ecosystems.

Medusa: A Review of an Ancient Cnidarian Body Form

Medusae (aka jellyfish) have multiphasic life cycles and a propensity to adapt to, and proliferate in, a plethora of aquatic habitats, connecting them to a number of ecological and societal issues. Now, in the midst of the genomics era, affordable next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms coupled with publically available bioinformatics tools present the much-anticipated opportunity to explore medusa taxa as potential model systems. Genome-wide studies of medusae would provide a remarkable opportunity to address long-standing questions related to the biology, physiology, and nervous system of some of the earliest pelagic animals. Furthermore, medusae have become key targets in the exploration of marine natural products, in the development of marine biomarkers, and for their application to the biomedical and robotics fields. Presented here is a synopsis of the current state of medusa research, highlighting insights provided by multi-omics studies, as well as existing knowledge gaps, calling upon the scientific community to adopt a number of medusa taxa as model systems in forthcoming research endeavors.

Repeatability of locomotor performance and of morphology – locomotor performance relationships

There is good evidence that natural selection drives the evolution of locomotor performance, but the processes that generate among individual variation in locomotion, the substrate upon which selection acts, are relatively poorly understood. We measured prolonged swimming performance, Ucrit, and morphology in a large cohort (n=461) of wildtype zebrafish, Danio rerio, at ∼6 months and again at ∼9 months. Using mixed model analyses to estimate repeatability as the intraclass correlation coefficient, we determined that Ucrit was significantly repeatable (r = 0.55; 95% CI: 0.45 -0.64). Performance differences between the sexes (males 12% faster than females) and changes with age (decreasing 0.07% per day) both contributed to variation in Ucrit and, therefore, the repeatability estimate. Accounting for mean differences between sexes within the model decreased the estimate of Ucrit repeatability to 21% below the naïve estimate, while fitting age in the models increased the estimate to 14% above the naïve estimate. Greater consideration of factors such as age and sex is therefore necessary for the interpretation of performance repeatability in wild populations. Body shape significantly predicted Ucrit in both sexes in both assays, with the morphology – performance relationship significantly repeatable at the population level. However, morphology was more strongly predicative of performance in older fish, suggesting a change in the contribution of morphology relative to other factors such as physiology and behaviour. The morphology – performance relationship changed with age to a greater extent in males than females.