Table of Contents

• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

High-resolution measurement of body displacement and angular position of individual appendages during escape swims of nauplii of the calanoid copepod, Bestiolina similis.

Related Reference:

Lenz, P.H., Takagi, D. and Hartline, D.K.  2015.  Choreographed swimming of copepod nauplii.  J. Royal Society Interface 12: 20150776.

Spontaneous escape swims were recorded at 5000 fps with an Olympus Industrial i-SPEED high-speed camera at 10x magnification through an inverted microscope (Olympus IX70).   See publication for additional details.

Each video image in a swim sequence was converted into a bitmap (tiff format) and analyzed using ImageJ (Wayne Rasband rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/).   Distance traveled from the initial rest point was calculate using Pythagorean theorem using X0, Xt and Y0, Yt coordinates.  See publication for additional details.

Description from NSF award abstract:
This study will experimentally elucidate the dynamics of predator evasion by different species and life stages of copepod responding to a model larval fish predator. The PIs will use standard and high-speed videographic and cutting-edge holographic techniques. Predator-prey interactions within planktonic communities are key to understanding how energy is transferred within complex marine food webs. Of particular interest are those between the highly numerous copepods and one of their more important predators, the ichthyoplankton (the planktonic larval stages of fishes). The larvae of most fishes are planktivorous and heavily dependent on copepods for food. In general, evasion success increases with age in copepods and decreases with the age of the fish predator. How this plays out in detail is critical in determining predatory attack outcomes and the effect these have on predator and prey survival. To address this problem, different copepod developmental stages will be tested against several levels of predator competence, and the results examined for: 1) the success or failure of attacks for different combinations of predator and prey age class; 2) the kinematics (reaction latencies and trajectory orientation) for escape attempts, successful and unsuccessful, for different age classes of copepod; 3) the hydrodynamic cues generated by different ages and attack strategies of the predator and the sensitivity of different prey stages to these cues; and 4) the success or failure of the predatory approach and attack strategies at each prey stage. The data obtained will be used to inform key issues of zooplankton population dynamics. For the prey these include: predator-evasion capabilities and importance of detection ability, reaction speed, escape speed, escape orientation, and trajectory irregularity; for the predator they are: capabilities and importance of mouth gape size, stealthiness, hydrodynamic disturbance production, and lunge kinematics.