The purpose of this class is to foster connections between physical and biological oceanographers.  There are many scales at which our disciplines overlap, and increasingly we are involved in interdisciplinary research projects.  This class will focus on small-scale, mechanistic interactions between biology and fluid flow.  The reason for starting here is that we hope it will provide a strong foundation for future research on larger systemic questions (such as carbon cycling in coastal regions).  Examples of topics we plan to explore are:

• How do planktonic organisms such as protists swim?
• What can they sense?
• Why do they swim?  What cues to they use?  Salinity, temperature, shear, strain, turbulence??
• How does the fluid environment influence life strategies of feeding, escape from predation, and reproduction?
• How is fluid flow influenced by coral, kelp, and sea grasses, and how does the altered flow relate to the organisms needs?

SYLLABUS (DRAFT, subject to change):

On days marked with a (**) the paper author will be giving the School of Oceanography Departmental Seminar at 3:30 after our class.  We will try to arrange for them to be available during or after class to discuss their research with us.

• January 7: Snow day!
• January 14: Franks, P. J. S. (2001) Turbulence avoidance: An alternate explanation of turbulence-enhanced ingestion rates in the field.  Limnol. Oceanogr., 46(4), 959-963.
• January 21: Background reading from textbooks - to be handed out in class on Jan 14.
• January 28: NO CLASS: (Ocean Sciences)
• ** February 4: Yen, J. (2000) Life in transition: Balancing inertial and viscous forces by planktonic copepods.  Biol. Bull., 198, 213-224.
• February 11: Kaandorp, J. A., et al. (2003) Simulation and analysis of flow patterns around the scleractinian coral Madracis Mirabilis (Duchassing and Michelotti).  Phil. T. Roy. Soc. B, 358, 1551-1557.
• February 18: NO CLASS (ASLO)
• ** March 3: Jackson, G., A. (1997) Currents in the high drag environment of a coastal kelp stand off California.  Cont Shelf Res., 17(15), 1913-1928.
• ** March 10: [1] Koehl, M. A. R., (2003) Physical modeling in biomechanics.  Philos. T. Roy. Soc. B, 358(1437), 1589-1596.  [2] Koehl, M. A. R., et al. (2001) Lobster sniffing: Antennule design and hydrodynamic filtering of information in an odor plume.  Science, 294(5548), 1948-1951.
• March 17: Visser, A. W. (2001) Hydromechanical signals in the plankton.  Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 222, 1-24.