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First published online November 17, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 4724-4731 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02566

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Ontogeny of swim performance and mechanics in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

Shawn R. Noren^1,2,*, George Biedenbach³ and Elizabeth F. Edwards¹

¹ Protected Resources Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, 8604 La Jolla Shores Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
² Institute of Marine Science, Center for Ocean Health, University of California at Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
³ Dolphin Quest Hawaii, c/o Hilton Waikoloa Village, 69-425 Waikoloa Beach Drive, Waikoloa, HI 96738, USA

View larger version (82K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. A digitized video clip of a two-year-old calf swimming independently at 3.84 m s-1. Movements of the rostrum are in pink, cranial insertion of the dorsal fin is in yellow and the fluke tip is shown in blue. The brown dot is a reference point that was digitized, indicating that the camera was steady during the trial.

View larger version (15K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. The body movements from the digitized video clip of a two-year-old calf swimming independently at 3.84 m s-1. Movements of the rostrum are in pink, cranial insertion of the dorsal fin is in yellow and the fluke tip is shown in blue. In this case, the dolphin swam from right to left, thus the orientation of the body parts was flipped in the y-plane during the coordinate transformation process (see Materials and methods). The magnitude of the distance between digitized points remains the same and is used in the calculations for swim effort. Peak-to-peak fluke stroke amplitude is the fluke displacement and is the difference in the y-coordinates of successive maximums and minimums (i.e. B-A and B-C) measured in m. Tailbeat frequency is the number of strokes s-1, where one stroke is adjacent maximums or adjacent minimums (i.e. one stroke is from A to C).

View larger version (16K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Swim speed (A) and size-specific swim speed (B) in relation to age. Black, gray and white symbols denote calves, juveniles and adults, respectively. A different symbol is used for each mother-calf pair (the juveniles were related to two of the mothers and are represented by the same symbol). L, body length.

View larger version (13K): [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Stroke amplitude (A) and size-specific stroke amplitude (B) in relation to age. Black, gray and white symbols denote calves, juveniles and adults, respectively. A different symbol is used for each mother-calf pair (the juveniles were related to two of the mothers and are represented by the same symbol). L, body length.

View larger version (14K): [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Tailbeat frequency (A) and normalized tailbeat frequency (B) in relation to age. Black, gray and white symbols denote calves, juveniles and adults, respectively. A different symbol is used for each mother-calf pair (the juveniles were related to two of the mothers and are represented by the same symbol).

View larger version (6K): [in a new window]   Fig. 6. Distance covered per stroke in relation to age. Black, gray and white symbols denote calves, juveniles and adults, respectively. A different symbol is used for each mother-calf pair (the juveniles were related to two of the mothers and are represented by the same symbol).