Bianco Giuseppe, Botte Vincenzo, Dubroca Laurent, Ribera d'Alcalà Maurizio, Mazzocchi Maria Grazia
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli, Italy.
PLoS One. 2013 Jun 27;8(6):e67640. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067640. Print 2013.
Planktonic copepods display a large repertoire of motion behaviors in a three-dimensional environment. Two-dimensional video observations demonstrated that the small copepod Clausocalanus furcatus, one the most widely distributed calanoids at low to medium latitudes, presented a unique swimming behavior that was continuous and fast and followed notably convoluted trajectories. Furthermore, previous observations indicated that the motion of C. furcatus resembled a random process. We characterized the swimming behavior of this species in three-dimensional space using a video system equipped with telecentric lenses, which allow tracking of zooplankton without the distortion errors inherent in common lenses. Our observations revealed unexpected regularities in the behavior of C. furcatus that appear primarily in the horizontal plane and could not have been identified in previous observations based on lateral views. Our results indicate that the swimming behavior of C. furcatus is based on a limited repertoire of basic kinematic modules but exhibits greater plasticity than previously thought.
浮游桡足类在三维环境中展现出丰富多样的运动行为。二维视频观测表明，小型桡足类克氏纺锤水蚤（Clausocalanus furcatus）是低至中纬度地区分布最广的哲水蚤之一，呈现出一种独特的游泳行为，这种行为持续且快速，轨迹明显曲折。此外，先前的观测表明，克氏纺锤水蚤的运动类似于随机过程。我们使用配备远心镜头的视频系统对该物种在三维空间中的游泳行为进行了特征描述，这种镜头能够追踪浮游动物，而不会产生普通镜头固有的失真误差。我们的观测揭示了克氏纺锤水蚤行为中出人意料的规律性，这些规律性主要出现在水平面上，基于侧视图的先前观测无法识别。我们的结果表明，克氏纺锤水蚤的游泳行为基于有限的基本运动学模块，但表现出比先前认为的更大的可塑性。
