By definition, planktonic organisms drift with the water flows. But these millimetric organisms are not necessarily passive; many can swim and can sense the surrounding flow through mechanosensory hairs. But how useful can be flow sensing in a turbulent environment? To address this question, we show two examples of smart planktonic behavior: (1) we develop a model where plantkters choose a swimming direction as a function of the velocity gradient to "surf on turbulence" and move efficiently upwards; (2) we show how a plankter measuring the velocity gradient may track the position of a swimming target from its hydrodynamic signature.
Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur (1904), Copepoda
Further Information
Christophe is Professor of Fluid Mechanics at Centrale Marseille. His research activity is carried out at the IRPHE institute in Marseille.
'His research addresses various fundamental problems of fluid and solid mechanics, including fluid-structure interactions, hydrodynamic instabilities, animal locomotion, aeroelasticity, rotating flows, and plant biomechanics. It generally involves a combination of analytical modeling, experiments, and numerical work.' (Taken from his website here: https://www.irphe.fr/~eloy/).'