. Annual report. Harvard University. Museum of Comparative Zoology. MCZ NEWS: RESEARCH Biomechanics and Fluid Dynamics When moving through water, fishes with flexible fins must continually react to the surrounding fluid to maintain stability and steady forward movement. Until recendy, die main method of analyzing fish wakes—and therefore the movement and force applied to the water by the fins—has been limited to two-dimensional techniques, which have left considerable room for error. In research published in Biology Letters, Brooke Flammang and colleagues used a novel 3D laser imaging techniqu
. Annual report. Harvard University. Museum of Comparative Zoology. MCZ NEWS: RESEARCH Biomechanics and Fluid Dynamics When moving through water, fishes with flexible fins must continually react to the surrounding fluid to maintain stability and steady forward movement. Until recendy, die main method of analyzing fish wakes—and therefore the movement and force applied to the water by the fins—has been limited to two-dimensional techniques, which have left considerable room for error. In research published in Biology Letters, Brooke Flammang and colleagues used a novel 3D laser imaging technique to instandv capture the interaction between fishes and their environment. The research was designed to test assumptions made under two-dimensional methods and to examine the interaction between the dorsal and anal fin wake and the tail fin, which has been technically difficult to do with traditional imaging approaches. On a "treadmill for fish," four bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) and a cichlid fish {Pseudotropheus greshakei) swam singly in a recirculating flow tank seeded with plastic particles suspended in die flow. A pulse laser illuminated the fluid downstream of the swimming fish, and die particle position and displacements were capmred by a camera and calculated using software. With the new svstem, researchers are able to analvze die entire volume of water being moved in each of multiple sequential photographic images. Flammang, an MCZ postdoctoral fellow at die Lauder lab, discovered that the dorsal and anal fins make a great conuibution to die tail fin wake, and thus are additional propellers, not merely stabilizers. Scientists have known that the dorsal and anal fins are important for balance, but have only now been able to show that they also play a significant role in locomotion. Flammang also used volumetric imaging to examine shark tail hydrodynamics in research to be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Flammang BE, Lauder GY, T
Size: 2662px × 939px
Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookpublishercambridgemassharvarduniversity
