Suction Flows Generated by the Carnivorous Bladderwort Utricularia—Comparing Experiments with Mechanical and Mathematical Models

Suction Flows Generated by the Carnivorous Bladderwort Utricularia—Comparing Experiments with Mechanical and Mathematical Models

Suction feeding is a well-understood feeding mode among macroscopic aquatic organisms. The little we know about small suction feeders from larval fish suggests that small suction feeders are not effective. Yet bladderworts, an aquatic carnivorous plant with microscopic underwater traps, have strong...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fluids (Basel) Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 33
Main Authors: Singh, Krizma, Reyes, Roberto C., Campa, Gabriel, Brown, Matthew D., Hidalgo, Fatima, Berg, Otto, Müller, Ulrike K.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-03-2020
Subjects:
Aquatic organisms
Aquatic plants
Axial flow
Bladder
bladderwort
Computational fluid dynamics
Diagnostic systems
Feeders
Feeding
Fish
Floating plants
Flow visualization
Fluid flow
Inertia
inlet flows
Larvae
Lasers
Mathematical models
Mouth
Plankton
Questioning
Solid mechanics
Suction
suction feeding
Viscosity
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Summary:Suction feeding is a well-understood feeding mode among macroscopic aquatic organisms. The little we know about small suction feeders from larval fish suggests that small suction feeders are not effective. Yet bladderworts, an aquatic carnivorous plant with microscopic underwater traps, have strong suction performances despite having the same mouth size as that of fish larvae. Previous experimental studies of bladderwort suction feeding have focused on the solid mechanics of the trap door’s opening mechanism rather than the mechanics of fluid flow. As flows are difficult to study in small suction feeders due to their small size and brief event durations, we combine flow visualization on bladderwort traps with measurements on a mechanical, dynamically scaled model of a suction feeder. We find that bladderwort traps generate flows that are more similar to the inertia-dominated flows of adult fish than the viscosity-dominated flows of larval fish. Our data further suggest that axial flow transects through suction flow fields, often used in biological studies to characterize suction flows, are less diagnostic of the relative contribution of inertia versus viscosity than transverse transects.
ISSN:2311-5521
2311-5521
DOI:10.3390/fluids5010033