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First published online May 1, 2009
Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 1494-1505 (2009)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2009
doi: 10.1242/jeb.026732
Using computational fluid dynamics to calculate the stimulus to the lateral line of a fish in still water
1 Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
2 Department of Biological Sciences and J. P. Scott Center for Neuroscience,
Mind and Behavior, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43402,
USA
* Author for correspondence (e-mail: hsjiang{at}whoi.edu)
Accepted 29 December 2008
| Summary |
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Key words: computational fluid dynamics, fish, lateral line system, dipole source, oscillatory boundary layer
| INTRODUCTION |
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The lateral line system consists of superficial (SN) and canal (CN)
neuromast subsystems, which are morphologically, physiologically and
functionally different (e.g. Coombs et
al., 1988
; Münz,
1989
). In terms of the basic structure, both types of neuromasts
consist of mechanosensory hair cells covered by a gelatinous cupula. However,
SNs are generally smaller in diameter (
100 µm) than CNs (up to several
thousands of microns) and contain fewer hair cells (<
100) compared
with CNs (
200–10,000)
(Münz, 1989
). Although
the relative numbers and spatial distribution of SNs versus CNs over
the head and body are quite species-specific, most if not all fish species
(e.g. the mottled sculpin Cottus bairdi) have both types of
neuromasts (Coombs et al.,
1988
). A reported exception is the plainfin midshipman fish,
Porichthys notatus, whose trunk lateral line only has SNs
(Weeg and Bass, 2002
). The
clear distinction between SNs and CNs is that SNs are located superficially on
the skin surface whereas CNs reside just below the skin surface in a
fluid-filled canal that opens up to the surrounding water via a
series of pores – one pore between each pair of neuromasts. Thus,
whereas SN cupulae protrude directly into the water surrounding the fish, CN
cupulae protrude into the canal fluids. Hair cells of both types are
mechanically excited by viscous coupling with the surrounding fluid motion
via the overlying cupula. An SN cupula, protruding into the
surrounding water, responds to the local fluid velocity field. A CN cupula,
being inside the canal, responds to the fluid motion induced by the local net
acceleration of the water against the fish skin, which is also proportional to
the pressure gradient across the surrounding two canal pores
(Denton and Gray, 1983
;
Kalmijn, 1989
).
Physiologically, SNs and CNs are likely to be innervated by different afferent
fibers (Münz, 1985
).
Thus, fish have separate channels for measuring the velocity and acceleration
fields produced by not only periodic
(Denton and Gray, 1983
;
Münz, 1985
;
Coombs and Janssen, 1989
;
Coombs and Janssen, 1990
;
Kroese and Schellart, 1992
)
but any stimuli (Bleckmann,
2008
).
Attention has been paid to the relative contributions of SNs and CNs to the
orienting behavior of fish in response to both live and artificial prey (e.g.
a chemically inert vibrating sphere). For the mottled sculpin, both
neurophysiological and controlled behavioral studies suggest that the
acceleration-responsive CNs, rather than the velocity-responsive SNs, mediate
the orienting behavior (e.g. Coombs and
Janssen, 1990
; Coombs et al.,
2001
). However, sculpin larvae can feed in the dark on
free-swimming Artemia at distance with the aid of SNs
(Jones and Janssen, 1992
).
Despite the fact that the SNs of the sculpin larvae are eventually embedded
into the canal to become CNs, the prey detection at the larval stage is due to
movement of the SN cupulae in response to local flow velocities. Similar
results were also found for the larvae of the willow shiner Gnathopogon
elongatus caerulescens for whom it was shown that the number of
Artemia consumed per larva was proportional to the cupular length and
saturated at lengths above
100 µm
(Mukai et al., 1994
). Later,
Mukai performed a controlled experiment using willow shiner larvae that
demonstrated the role of mechanoreception by the SNs on prey detection
(Mukai, 2006
). Abdel-Latif et
al. showed that, under still water conditions, the blind cave fish
Astyanax mexicanus could still detect and approach a small vibrating
sphere, presumably by means of its SN subsystem after the destruction of its
CN subsystem (Abdel-Latif et al.,
1990
). However, there is a debate (e.g.
Coombs et al., 2001
;
Mogdans, 2005
) concerning the
exact detection mechanism, as the pressure field around a dipole source could
theoretically be detected by the pressure-sensitive ear of this species.
The stimulus to the lateral line system is the relative motion between fish
skin and adjacent water, which is described by the spatio–temporal
varying flow velocity and pressure fields surrounding the lateral line system.
In general, such flow velocity and pressure fields are not (fully) measured in
neurophysiological and behavioral studies – particularly in regions
close to the skin where boundary layers are important. The inability to
measure and specify the stimulus hinders our understanding of the lateral line
system (Coombs and Montgomery,
1999
). Potential flow theory (PFT) has been used in the past to
address this issue. For example, the potential dipole source flow equations
were used to model the pressure field due to a vibrating sphere near a fish
body (e.g. Coombs et al.,
1996
; Coombs and Conley,
1997a
; Coombs and Conley,
1997b
; Conley and Coombs,
1998
; Coombs et al.,
2000
; Curcic-Blake and van
Netten, 2006
). The same equations were used to calculate the slip
flow velocity along the fish skin, caused by a nearby vibrating sphere (e.g.
Kroese et al., 1978
). (In PFT,
the boundary condition at a solid wall requires only that the fluid velocity
normal to the wall be equal to the wall velocity. Thus, the fluid is allowed
to `slip' past the wall surface in the wall tangential direction.) This slip
flow velocity was taken as the stimulus to the SNs, with the assumption that
the cupular lengths were long enough to penetrate the viscous boundary layer
along the fish's skin. More sophisticated potential flow solutions have been
developed to calculate the slip flow velocity distribution (and pressure
distribution) over idealized fish body geometry
(Hassan, 1985
;
Hassan, 1992a
;
Hassan, 1992b
;
Hassan, 1993
). All of these
studies ignore the fact that the real flow has to satisfy the no-slip boundary
condition at the fish skin due to viscosity, i.e. zero relative velocity at
the skin in both the normal and tangential directions [see pp. 140–143
in Panton (Panton, 1996
)].
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solves the Navier–Stokes
equations, which include the viscous terms. CFD simulations have been
previously employed to investigate tadpole swimming
(Liu et al., 1996
;
Liu et al., 1997
), fish
undulatory swimming (Carling et al.,
1998
; Kern and Koumoutsakos,
2006
; Borazjani and
Sotiropoulos, 2008
), dorsal–tail fin interaction in swimming
fish (Akhtar et al., 2007
),
oral cavity flow in ram suspension-feeding fish
(Cheer et al., 2001
), jet flow
behind a modeled swimming squid (Jiang and
Grosenbaugh, 2006
) and drag forces acting on a simulated neuromast
inside a fish lateral line trunk canal with the canal flow driven by a
two-dimensional (2-D) vortex street outside the canal
(Barbier and Humphrey, 2008
).
To our knowledge, no previous CFD simulations have studied the flow due to a
vibrating sphere (i.e. a dipole source) or a swimming prey-like object near a
three-dimensional (3-D) fish body and calculated directly the stimuli to the
lateral line system. CFD is useful because it has the ability to consider
realistic fish body geometry and realistic spatial arrangements of the fish
body and the signal source and because it can simultaneously output both the
pressure and flow velocity fields at the lateral line locations. In the
present study, we carried out a CFD numerical investigation of the flow due to
a vibrating sphere near a mottled sculpin in still water. We performed a
series of simulations of a prey-tracking sequence of a mottled sculpin as it
responded to an artificial prey (i.e. vibrating sphere). The approximate shape
and orientation of the fish body were taken directly from a video recording of
a real tracking sequence (Coombs and
Conley, 1997a
). The series of simulations show explicitly how the
presence of the fish body perturbs the contour lines of constant pressure of
the dipole field.
The flow due to the vibrating sphere must satisfy the no-slip boundary condition at the fish's skin. This produces an oscillatory boundary layer of sheared flow that affects the magnitude of the hydrodynamic signals detectable by the SNs. As important as this effect is, we were not able to simulate it directly for a 3-D fish-shaped body because of limited computational resources. Instead, we used CFD to calculate the 3-D oscillatory boundary layer flow along a flat plate produced by a nearby vibrating sphere. We then used this result to validate an analytical model of an oscillatory boundary layer flow. The analytical model was then applied to a number of previous neurophysiological and behavioral experiments to calculate detection thresholds that take into account viscous effects.
This paper considers only flow due to the motion of the vibrating sphere in calm water. A future paper will include the added effects of an ambient, unidirectional current.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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In the 2-D setup (Fig. 1),
the cross-sections of the sculpin body and of the sphere formed the inner
boundaries of a rectangular computational domain (275x100 cm). The
sculpin body was held stationary. The cross-section of the sphere was given a
prescribed axis of motion along with a solid-body vibration with the following
time history:
![]() | (1) |
=2
f where f is the
vibration frequency in Hz. A no-slip boundary condition was prescribed at the
sculpin body and at the perimeter of the sphere cross-section. Also prescribed
was a zero pressure inlet boundary condition at the outer boundaries of the
domain (to approximate an infinite domain). The area between the inner and the
outer boundaries of the domain was discretized into triangular meshes. The
consecutive nodal points on the sculpin cross-section were 2 mm apart, close
to the spacing between two consecutive lateral line CNs in the trunk canal of
a real sculpin (Coombs et al.,
1988
|
|
, was 1.0x103 kg m–3 and
the fluid kinematic viscosity,
, was 1.0x10–6
m2 s–1. The governing equations with the
above-described computational domains and simulation setups were solved by a
commercially available, finite-volume code, FLUENTTM (v. 6.2.16, Lebanon,
New Hampshire, USA). The third-order MUSCL (Monotone Upstream-Centered Schemes
for Conservation Laws) scheme was used for spatial interpolation. The PRESTO!
(PREssure STaggering Option) scheme was selected as the discretization method
for pressure. The PISO (Pressure-Implicit with Splitting of Operators) scheme
was used for pressure–velocity coupling. Temporal discretization was a
first-order implicit scheme. A dynamic mesh model built into FLUENTTM was
employed to explicitly consider the sphere vibration.
To examine the effect that the fish body and fins have on the received
dipole pressure signal, two body geometries were considered: body with fins
extended (Figs 1 and
2) and body with fins retracted
(this geometry is not shown). Also considered was a virtual-body case where
the standard potential dipole source flow solutions
(Pozrikidis, 1997
) in an
unbounded domain (without any internal fish boundaries) were evaluated at
virtual lateral line locations identical to those on a real fish body. For all
cases, the time step for integration was set at 1/100th of the vibration
period. The 2-D flow field was initialized by simulating 200 time steps; the
3-D flow field was initialized by simulating 1000 time steps. This was done to
allow transients to decay. After the initial start-up, flow velocity and
pressure fields were saved at each time step for post-processing.
For the 2-D setup, pressure gradients were calculated along the sculpin
cross-section by:
![]() | (2) |
To validate the 3-D setup and simulation procedure, a few cases of a
vibrating sphere above a flat plane wall were simulated. The mesh densities
over the sphere surface and over the plane wall were the same as those used
for the 3-D simulations that incorporated the fish body. The numerical results
for the magnitudes of the pressure and pressure gradient (which are not
affected by viscosity) showed excellent agreement with the PFT solution of a
sphere vibrating above a plane wall (Fig.
3). The 2-D setup and simulation procedures were validated in a
similar way (Rapo, 2009
).
|
Both oscillatory boundary layers have the same Stokes viscous length scale,
, defined as:
![]() | (3) |
is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid and
=2
f. (For f=50 Hz, which is a typical condition
used in many experiments, 
80 µm.) Because of the oscillatory
nature of the motion considered, viscous diffusion due to the presence of the
wall cannot penetrate beyond a distance of order
away from the wall
[e.g. pp. 263–272 in Panton (Panton,
1996
The 3-D computational mesh as described in the previous section was unable
to resolve the oscillatory boundary layer along a fish-shaped body because the
distances from centroids of the wall-adjacent control volumes to the fish skin
were
290 µm, which is much larger than
. To resolve this
boundary layer, we would need to use a much finer near-wall mesh, which our
current computational setup could not handle. To deal with this problem, we
used CFD to calculate, instead, the flow along a flat plate produced by a
nearby vibrating sphere. Anderson et al.
(Anderson et al., 2001
) have
shown that flat-plate boundary layer theory can be used to model the boundary
layer along a fish, and we adopted this assumption for the oscillatory case.
The flat-plate geometry required fewer mesh points overall than a fish-shaped
body while still allowing for a fine grid-point spacing at the wall
(grid-point locations were at 0, 5, 13, 24, 39, 61 µm... away from the
wall). The plane wall surface was covered by quadrilateral meshes. A deforming
mesh zone, consisting of tetrahedral meshes, was present around the sphere so
as to represent the motion explicitly. The volume between the deforming mesh
zone and the boundary layer mesh zone close to the plane wall was divided into
tetrahedral control volumes. The same numerical schemes and time step as
previously described were used. Large parameter ranges as found in the
literature were considered; velocity amplitude 7 mm
s–1
U0
314 mm s–1,
sphere radius 2.5 mm
a
18 mm and distance from sphere to fish
body 1.1 cm
r
20 cm.
For the remainder of this section, we consider a sphere with vibration axis
parallel to the wall. We define a Cartesian coordinate system such that the
positive x-direction is parallel to the wall and to the axis of the
sphere vibration, the positive y-direction is the wall-normal
direction toward the sphere, the positive z-direction is chosen such
that the defined xyz-coordinate system satisfies the right-hand rule
and u, v and w are the x-, y- and
z-velocity components, respectively. Using this Cartesian coordinate
system, the strain rate tensor, S, can be defined as (e.g.
Pozrikidis, 1997
):
![]() | (4) |
![]() | (5) |
We use the CFD simulation of the oscillatory flat-plate boundary layer to
validate a simpler analytical model, which we then use in the next section of
this paper to analyze threshold velocity and S responses of SNs. The
following is the analytical model. For a sphere vibrating parallel to a flat
plane wall with r>>
, the wall-parallel velocity profile
along the wall-normal (y-) direction has an approximate solution:
![]() | (6) |
) is the amplitude correction term due to the
sphere boundary layer and
is the phase delay. Both are calculated
according to van Netten (van Netten,
2006
![]() | (7) |
![]() | (8) |
|
t+
)=3
/4. This gives:
![]() | (9) |
![]() | (10) |
u is the maximum velocity difference between the cupular
tip and base over the whole vibration cycle. | RESULTS |
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|
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|
Simulated prey-tracking sequence: the 3-D case
The same sculpin tracking sequence was simulated using the 3-D setup
(Fig. 5B–D). The presence
of the fish body perturbs the pressure field but to a lesser extent than for
the 2-D case. Whereas there are clear differences between the results for fins
extended and fins retracted in the 2-D case (columns 2 and 3 in
Fig. 5A), there is no such
detectable difference in the 3-D case (columns 2 and 3 in
Fig. 5B). The reason is that,
in the 3-D case, the dipole source flow field extends over and under the fins,
as well as around them and therefore there is no longer any zone of near
constant pressure behind the extended fins. In the 3-D case, the presence of
the fish body still shields a region of water on the contralateral side from
the dipole source but the overall effect of this shadow zone is weaker than
for the 2-D case. The overall pressure field calculated from PFT without the
fish body present is different from that obtained from the 3-D CFD simulations
but the magnitude of the calculated pressure gradients along the virtual fish
mid-plane profile are quite similar to those calculated from the 3-D CFD
simulations. This is not the case in the 2-D simulation.
The magnitude of the pressure gradient around the fish body is directly related to the location of the dipole source. Spatial variations are most striking when comparing the ipsilateral side of the fish closest with the dipole source and the contralateral side. However, equally noticeable are the differences in magnitude seen between the head and trunk of the fish. In the starting position (Fig. 5B), the magnitude of the pressure gradient is larger on the ipsilateral side near the end of the trunk (blue line) than at the front of the fish (green line). In the second position (Fig. 5C), the magnitude of the pressure gradient is similar for both the head and trunk (green line versus blue and red lines) but a clear difference still exists between the two sides of the fish (blue line versus red line). In the third position (Fig. 5D), the head of the fish is much closer to the dipole source, while the tail is further away. The pressure gradient amplitude has more than quadrupled for the front sections of the head canals (green line). Also, the contrast in pressure gradients between the two sides of the fish has widened (blue line versus red line).
Fig. 6 shows the pressure gradients along the lateral line canals of the mottled sculpin (Fig. 2C) based on the 3-D CFD results for the third position of the video sequence (Fig. 5D). Interestingly, the ipsilateral (positive numbers on the horizontal axis) pressure-gradient patterns along supraorbital, infraorbital and mandibular canals with different elevations (above and below the eye and along the lower jaw) but largely overlapping azimuths (rostro-caudal extents) tend to converge on the same, nearly redundant pattern. However, patterns on the ipsi- and contralateral side (negative numbers) are dramatically different. Ipsilateral patterns have steeper slopes and distinct zero-crossings (locations where the direction or sign of the pressure gradient changes from positive to negative). In this case, the true source location is near the zero-crossing point on the ipsilateral side.
|
Kroese et al. (Kroese et al.,
1978
) used a=1.55 mm oscillating at f=20 Hz
parallel to the skin and perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of an SN of
the clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), with
U0=5x10–4 ms–1 and
placed at a distance of r=3.75 mm from the skin. They assumed an SN
cupula height of 100 µm and found a velocity threshold of 38
µms–1 based on the potential flow equations. The Stokes
viscous length scale for these particular experimental conditions calculated
using Eqn 3 is
=126 µm.
Thus, the cupula would be fully immersed in the oscillatory boundary layer
flow. From Eqn 6, we find that
u at the tip of the cupula after being corrected for the boundary
layer effects is 30 µms–1 (about 21% smaller than Kroese
et al.'s threshold estimated from PFT). From
Eqn 9, we find that the maximum
Swall threshold is 0.45 s–1 and from
Eqn 10 the maximum
Saverage is 0.30 s–1.
Coombs and Janssen estimated velocity thresholds for SNs located along the
trunk lateral line of mottled sculpin from neurophysiological measurements
(Coombs and Janssen, 1990
).
The velocity field was produced by an oscillating sphere whose center was
placed r=15 mm away from the fish trunk. The radius of the sphere was
3 mm and it was oscillated in a direction perpendicular to the substrate
(up/down with respect to the fish) at frequencies in the range 10–500
Hz. The source velocity amplitude of the sphere corresponding to the threshold
response, while not explicitly given, can be calculated using the dipole
equations (e.g. Pozrikidis,
1997
) and the results given in
fig. 7 of Coombs and Janssen
(Coombs and Janssen, 1990
). We
estimated that the peak-to-peak acceleration threshold (at the fish) for SNs
at 10 Hz is –55 dB re. 1 m s–1 and that the threshold
acceleration increases linearly by about 7.5 dB octave–1.
From this, we determined that the corresponding source velocity amplitude of
the sphere needed to produce the measured peak-to-peak acceleration in an
unbounded fluid to be about 3.5 mm s–1 for 10 Hz, 5.3 mm
s–1 for 50 Hz and 6.3 mm s–1 for 100 Hz. The
corresponding velocity amplitude threshold at the tip of the SN cupula based
on potential flow equations (with values doubled to account for the presence
of the fish body) is 28 µms–1 at 10 Hz, 42
µms–1 at 50 Hz and 50 µms–1 at 100 Hz.
The velocity threshold values corrected for the oscillatory boundary layer
effects (assuming H=100 µm) are 18 µms–1 at 10
Hz, 42 µms–1 at 50 Hz and 54 µms–1 at
100 Hz, where
=176 µm at 10 Hz,
=80 µm at 50 Hz and
=56 µm at 100 Hz. The velocity threshold for the 10 Hz case is lower
than the potential flow case due to the slowing of the flow near the wall, the
velocity threshold for the 50 Hz case is unchanged and the velocity threshold
for 100 Hz case is actually slightly higher than the potential flow case due
to overshoot in the velocity profile (Fig.
7). {At certain distances from the wall the phase lag in viscous
stresses is so great that the viscous and pressure terms actually add
together. The combination of these forces accelerates the fluid to produce the
overshoot [pp. 268–269 in Panton
(Panton, 1996
)].} The
experimental parameter values give maximum Swall of 0.24
s–1 at 10 Hz, 0.78 s–1 at 50 Hz and 1.30
s–1 at 100 Hz. With H=100 µm, the maximum
Saverage are 0.18 s–1 at 10 Hz, 0.42
s–1 at 50 Hz and 0.54 s–1 at 100 Hz.
|
Alternately, Abdel-Latif et al. showed that blind cave fish could orient
toward a vibrating sphere even when the CN subsystem was disabled, indicating
that the fish were relying on the SN subsystem to locate the sphere
(Abdel-Latif et al., 1990
).
Their experimental parameters were a=2.5 mm, r=20 cm,
f=10–90 Hz and displacement amplitudes = 0.2–1.4 mm. A
positive behavioral response for frequencies 50 Hz and 70 Hz was reported for
all amplitudes. The corresponding velocity thresholds (taking into account the
oscillatory boundary layer effects) based on an SN height of 200 µm
(Teyke, 1988
) are
0.14–0.96 µms–1 at 50 Hz and 0.19–1.31
µms–1 at 70 Hz (depending on the displacement amplitude).
These values are well below the threshold values of the SNs of other species
described above. In addition, the maximum Swall range is
0.0023–0.016 s–1 at 50 Hz and 0.0037–0.026
s–1 at 70 Hz, and the maximum Saverage
range is 0.0007–0.048 s–1 at 50 Hz and
0.0010–0.0065 s–1 at 70 Hz. Again these are extremely
low values, even acknowledging the possibility of signal startup transients,
which from the present numerical simulation briefly increased the maximum wall
strain rate up to 4 times the steady state value.
| DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The 3-D results confirm that it is valid to use PFT to predict the spatial
patterns of pressure gradient that affect the canal subsystem. The CFD
simulations show that the fish body does perturb the dipole pressure field but
only to a small extent, such that the pressure gradients evaluated along the
lateral line locations are quite similar to those calculated from the 3-D
virtual body case using PFT. This confirms the effectiveness of using PFT to
estimate pressure-gradient patterns to the canal subsystem created by a
vibrating sphere in still water (Goulet et
al., 2008
). The 3-D CFD results do show that the extended fins
significantly distort the dipole pressure field locally. The fact that the
lateral line trunk canals of the mottled sculpin are routed above the pectoral
fins is probably of morphological significance, as it appears that this may
limit the distortion in the received signal.
Our higher resolved CFD boundary layer simulations using a flat-plate model
highlight the fact that a vibrating sphere generates an oscillatory boundary
layer at the fish's skin. The resulting flow velocity signal to the SNs and
their responses are greatly affected by characteristics of the oscillatory
boundary layer, which include its thickness (characterized by the Stokes
viscous length scale) and the time-varying and height-varying flow magnitude
and direction. Because of the presence of a boundary layer at the fish's skin,
the velocity and velocity gradient patterns that act on the SNs cannot be
predicted by PFT. In particular, there is a phase difference
(Fig. 4A) between the flow
velocity outside and inside the oscillatory boundary layer. Also, there is
overshooting of the flow velocity inside the boundary layer
(Fig. 4C,D), such that the
velocity inside the boundary layer can be greater than the outside flow. Thus,
the height of the cupula becomes an important parameter. For example, a cupula
with a shorter height that is completely immersed in the boundary layer will
experience a weaker integrated flow over its length than a taller cupula that
extends outside the boundary layer. Consequently, a weaker response from the
shorter cupula will be expected. Mukai et al. found that the feeding rate of
the willow shiner larvae consuming Artemia was proportional to the
cupular length on the larva body and saturated at lengths above
100 µm
(Mukai et al., 1994
). The
trend of their fig. 1 curve
relating the feeding rate to the cupular length corresponds well with the
trend of the curves shown in Fig.
7 of the present study, which can be interpreted as the maximum
tip-to-base velocity difference as a function of neuromast height for three
different frequencies. Fig. 7
may provide an explanation to their results, provided that the larvae use the
SNs to detect appendage-beating movement of Atemia.
There is a minimum cupular displacement that must occur in order for the
neuromast to respond, corresponding to a minimum velocity whose drag force
causes the displacement. This is called the velocity threshold. Although the
velocity threshold may be species-specific, the CNs probably respond to
internal canal fluid velocities as low as 1–10 µms–1
(van Netten, 2006
). Inside the
subdermal canal, the velocity is driven by the pressure difference between
pore openings, which translates to an acceleration threshold of 0.1–1 mm
s–2 (van Netten,
2006
). The SNs respond to as little as 25–60
µms–1 (for a review, see
van Netten, 2006
). These
results were obtained using PFT with the assumption that the cupular height is
larger than the boundary layer thickness. Using our analytical treatment, we
showed that the oscillatory boundary layer formed at the fish's skin should be
taken into account when estimating these velocity thresholds. The oscillatory
boundary layer correction can be significant depending on the cupular height
relative to the boundary layer thickness. Re-analysis of Coombs and Janssen
(Coombs and Janssen, 1990
)
gives a threshold velocity range of 18–54 µms–1 over
a frequency range of 10–100 Hz, when the oscillatory boundary layer
effects are taken into account. The velocity threshold can also be defined as
the maximum tip-to-base velocity difference experienced by the cupula, because
the base velocity is zero. This is species-specific and depends on a number of
parameters, including cupular height and shape, as well as internal cupula
stiffness (McHenry et al.,
2008
).
From CFD outputs, one may calculate maximum wall-strain rates, which are a
measure of the near-wall fluid-parcel deformation probably experienced by the
SNs and are independent of cupular height. For the mottled sculpin of the
Coombs et al. (Coombs et al.,
2001
) experiment, the maximum wall strain rates given in the
previous section corresponded to the threshold values of SNs (either just
above or just below, depending on the starting distance of the fish from the
vibrating dipole source). At the same time, the acceleration experienced by
the lateral line canal subsystem (based on
Fig. 6) is 5–50 mm
s–2, which is many times stronger than the reported
acceleration detection thresholds of CNs. This is consistent with the
conclusion that the acceleration-responsive CNs, rather than the
velocity-responsive SNs, mediate the mottled sculpin's orienting behavior to
the vibrating sphere (e.g. Coombs et al.,
2001
). However, all the SN thresholds calculated for the blind
cave fish of the Abdel-Latif et al.
(Abdel-Latif et al., 1990
)
experiment are extremely low as compared with those numbers obtained for other
experiments. This raises concerns regarding claims that the SNs were used for
detecting the dipole source, especially since these otophysan fish have
pressure-sensitive ears that could have easily detected the pressure changes
of a nearby dipole source of the same frequency
(Montgomery et al., 2001
).
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS


u




f
| Acknowledgments |
|---|
| References |
|---|
|
|
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