Recent behavior experiments have demonstrated that paddlefish can make use of stochastic resonance while feeding on Daphnia plankton. Here we calculate the information content of the noisy Daphnia signal at the paddlefish rostrum using an exact statistical treatment of threshold stochastic resonance as a minimal neural model. These calculations compare well with experimentally obtained data on ...

Introduction Conclusions References

To overcome sinking, plankton have devised various types of strategies. One is swimming, that is, an active, energy-consuming self-propulsion than can oppose gravitational sinking. Other phytoplankters can modify their buoyancy, becoming, at least for some time, positively buoyant. Others can exploit the turbulence in the mixed layer, using it to stay suspended for longer times. This latter opt...

The objective of the funded work is to quantify the contribution of ecological processes to patch formation in the coastal ocean. These objectives will be addressed by simultaneously quantify (1) spatial and temporal characteristics of large plankton patches, (2) the physical and chemical conditions these patches occur in and (3) the plankton population dynamics of the dominant layer forming sp...

Experiments were carried out on four cell types: Chlorella sp., Tetraselmis sp., and mesophyll protoplasts of Dendrobium and Lilium longiflorum. The speed of cell translation in between a pair of cylindrical electrodes was measured at different solution conductivities (σs). For each field frequency, the speed was plotted against the gradient of electric field squared to obtain the real part Re[...

Diel vertical migration of plankton has been proposed to affect global ocean circulation to a degree comparable to winds and tides. This biomixing process has never been directly observed, however, due to the inability to predict its occurrence in situ or to reproduce it in a laboratory setting. Furthermore, it has been argued that the energy imparted to the ocean by plankton migrations occurs ...