Odor Plumes and Animal Navigation in Turbulent Water Flow: A Field Study

Turbulence causes chemical stimuli to be highly variable in time and space; hence the study of animal orientation in odor plumes presents a formidable challenge. Through combined chemical and physical measurements, we characterized the transport of attractant released by clam prey in a turbulent aquatic environment. Concurrently, we quantified the locomotory responses of predatory crabs successfully searching for sources of clam attractant. Our results demonstrate that both rheotaxis and chemotaxis are necessary for successful orientation. Perception of chemical cues causes crabs to move in the upstream direction, but feedback from attractant distributions directly regulates movement across-stream in the plume. Orientation mechanisms used by crabs difler from those employed by flying insects, the only other system in which navigation relative to odor plumes has been coupled with fluid dynamics. Insects respond to odors by moving upstream, but they do not use chemical distributions to determine across-stream direction, whereas crabs do. Turbulent eddy diffusivities in crab habitats are 100 to 1000 times lower than those of terrestrial grasslands and forests occupied by insects. Insects must respond to plumes consisting of highly dispersed, tiny filaments or parcels of odor. Crabs rely more heavily on spatial aspects of chemical stimulus distributions because their fluid dynamic environment creates a more stable plume structure, thus permitting chemotaxis.