Biomechanics of fish swimming and leaping under waterfalls: a realistic field, image-based biophysical model with bioengineering implications.

Bioinspiration & Biomimetics
R Morán-López, O Uceda Tolosa

Abstract

Worldwide river fragmentation by infrastructures is altering essential ecological processes including fish migrations. Unlike laboratory approaches, field methods and biophysical models have the potential to provide realistic representations of interacting fish-obstacle systems, furthering insights in behavioural and biomechanics science, and allowing better bioinspired engineering. We developed a new field, image-based method that integrates a biophysical mechanistic model to describe the swimming and leaping biomechanics of wild populations of fish in the non-lab ecological context where their reproductive migration takes place. A weir obstacle in natural riverine conditions where fish freely migrate upstream to their breeding grounds was filmed. A biophysical model including the relevant biomechanical and hydraulic forces and their interactions was parametrised and calibrated with the spatial coordinates of fish trajectories. The method was validated with independent empirical data under field conditions. The distribution of fish initial velocities and angle of emergence of the sample of filmed leaps were reliably quantified in field conditions. The distribution of burst swimming velocities underwater was differentiated from...Continue Reading

References

Jul 20, 2006·Journal of the Royal Society, Interface·Juerg M Brunnschweiler
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Aug 30, 2011·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·W Scott Schwenk, Therese M Donovan
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Sep 1, 2018·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Frank J Rahel, Robert L McLaughlin
Mar 7, 2019·Journal of the Royal Society, Interface·Brian ChangSunghwan Jung

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