Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, IRPHE, Marseille 13384, France.
Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3140, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Aug 5;129(6):064502. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.064502.
In marine plankton, many swimming species can perceive their environment with flow sensors. Can they use this flow information to travel faster in turbulence? To address this question, we consider plankters swimming at constant speed, whose goal is to move upward. We propose a robust analytical behavior that allows plankters to choose a swimming direction according to the local flow gradients. We show numerically that such plankters can "surf" on turbulence and reach net vertical speeds up to twice their swimming speed. This new physics-based model suggests that planktonic organisms can exploit turbulence features for navigation.
在海洋浮游生物中，许多游动物种可以通过流传感器感知环境。它们能否利用这种流动信息在湍流中更快地移动？为了解决这个问题，我们考虑以恒定速度游动的浮游生物，它们的目标是向上移动。我们提出了一种稳健的分析行为，使浮游生物能够根据局部流梯度选择游泳方向。我们通过数值模拟表明，这样的浮游生物可以在湍流中“冲浪”，并达到比其游泳速度快两倍的净垂直速度。这种新的基于物理的模型表明，浮游生物可以利用湍流特征进行导航。
