NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: Suction feeding in the pharyngeal jaw apparatus

Avidan, Corrine, Eilat

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. Fish have the remarkable ability to capture and swallow food underwater without the help of hands, fingers or tongues, yet the biomechanical mechanism of swallowing in fish is entirely unknown. Most species of fish have a secondary set of pharyngeal jaws located in the back of their throats that may help suck the food back for swallowing and provide fine control for the movement of particles suspended in water. This research uses museum collections and approaches from biology and physics to discover how fish use pharyngeal jaws to control food movement in water. This work is important because it will illuminate a critical function, swallowing, in fish and may have applications to robots designed to manipulate particles suspended in water. Through this research, the fellow receives training in using museum collections with interdisciplinary methods from physics, engineering, and biology. To advance the fellow’s expertise while promoting teaching, training, and learning, the fellow acts as a key advisor for individuals from underrepresented groups in the Marine Biology Science Club for a public high school. This research proposes the novel hypothesis that an intra-oropharyngeal suction flow can be generated with the opening movement of the pharyngeal jaws and that this flow contributes to food transport toward the esophagus and precise positioning of the food for chewing and swallowing. For this research, museum specimens belonging to a diverse groups of fishes are used to quantify these pharyngeal jaw morphologies, and coupled with X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology measurements of the pharyngeal jaw movements and fluid dynamics within the mouth during feeding, will be united to determine how morphological variation changes the flow manipulation and prey processing. The fellow utilizes computational fluid dynamics as functions of morphology and kinematics to allow for a better understanding of how the variation of pharyngeal jaws across teleost influences the flow produced, potentially unlocking key information about performance matrices such as handling time of prey. The fellow will inspire high school students to pursue options in STEM fields buy increasing conceptual knowledge of the marine sciences, promoting the use of technology for scientific inquiry, and preparing students for careers in these fields by nurturing scientific curiosity and reasoning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.