Moving Through a Turbulent Environment: Embedding models in real-world data

Abstract.  When organisms locomote and interact in nature, they must navigate through complex habitats that vary on many spatial scales, and they are buffeted by turbulent wind or water currents and waves that also vary on a range of spatial and temporal scales.  We have been using the microscopic larvae of bottom-dwelling marine animals to study how the interaction between the swimming or crawling by an organism and the turbulent water flow around them determines how they move through the environment.  Many bottom-dwelling marine animals produce microscopic larvae that are dispersed to new sites by ambient water currents, and then must land and stay put on surfaces in suitable habitats.  Field and laboratory measurements enabled us to quantify the fine-scale, rapidly-changing patterns of water velocity vectors and of chemical cue concentrations near coral reefs and along fouling communities (organisms growing on docks and ships). We also measured the locomotory performance of larvae of reef-dwelling and fouling community animals, and their responses to chemical and mechanical cues.  We used these data to design agent-based models of larval behavior.  By putting model larvae into our real-world flow and chemical data, which varied on spatial and temporal scales experienced by microscopic larvae, we could explore how different responses by larvae affected their transport and their recruitment into reefs or fouling communities.  The most effective strategy for recruitment depends on habitat.