Are Daphnia Turning Angles Selected for Survival?

Ricardo Jorge Altino Garcia and Frank Moss, Center of Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri- St. Louis

Daphnia are aquatic creatures that mostly drift with the current, but in still water while feeding, they wander about in a confined location. They swim in a sequence of discrete hops, mainly confining themselves to the horizontal planes. The hops are motivated by beats of a pair of swimming appendages.

located near the head. Each hop is followed by a directional change represented by a turn through some angle. It was observed that the mean turning angle of foraging Daphnia are similar across species, suggesting that the mean turning angles are selected for survival. Data of two species will be presented in this research.