Suction Feeding in Fish

Most fish feed by rapidly expanding the mouth with some complex biomechanics. This expansion simultaneously generates negative pressure within the mouth and a flow field external to its head that draws prey towards the mouth. Most of my work has focused on the fluid mechanics of this feeding and have measured fluid speeds in different species of fish with PIV and pressures within the mouth cavity. Moving forward, I'd like to study the complex biomechanical motion. Although the musculo-skeletal system in a typical fish skull involves more than 30 moving bones and two dozen muscles that move in a complex 3-dimensional manner, even the most sophisticated existing models are based on 2-dimensional linkages and simple levers. Currently, there are some reasonable heuristic explanations of how muscle forces translate into dorso-ventral and lateral expansion of the mouth and anterior movement of jaw, but these models are not exceptionally quantitative or predictive. The modeling of dynamic multi-component structures is well-developed in engineering and physics and specific tools have been developed to do this efficiently and accurately using computers.