Fluid mechanics in biology
How turbulence shapes biology: fish feeding and swimming, moth odor tracking, bird flight, and seaweed growth
We develop unique experiments to study the interplay between turbulent flows and biology: male moths navigating in turbulent environments using odor-plume physics alone, the motion and feeding of small organisms in turbulent water, the aerodynamics of bird flight, and the intensive growth of macroalgae under controlled turbulent mechanical stress.
In fish, we've shown that the local hydrodynamic regime around a larval fish determines whether a feeding strike succeeds, by shaping the kinematics of the strike itself; in adult fish, small perturbations to the tailbeat can improve swimming efficiency by changing the phase lag between the body's motion and the fluid's response. In moths, we built an odor-plume navigation algorithm and open-source simulation that lets males find a pheromone source using nothing but the turbulent structure of the plume, without any spatial gradient information. In birds, we use particle image velocimetry, including our own open-source OpenPIV-MATLAB toolkit, to measure the aerodynamics of flapping flight.
Selected publications
V. China, L. Levy, A. Liberzon, T. Elmaliach, R. Holzman (2017), "Hydrodynamic regime determines the feeding success of larval fish through the modulation of strike kinematics", Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
L.M. Chao, L. Jia, S. Wang, A. Liberzon, S. Ravi, I.D. Couzin, L. Li (2024), "Tailbeat perturbations improve swimming efficiency by reducing the phase lag between body motion and the resulting fluid response", PNAS Nexus.
A. Liberzon, K. Harrington, N. Daniel, R. Gurka, A. Harari, G. Zilman (2018), "Moth-inspired navigation algorithm in a turbulent odor plume from a pulsating source", PLOS ONE.
Y. Golov, N. Benelli, R. Gurka, A. Harari, G. Zilman, A. Liberzon (2021), "Open-source computational simulation of moth-inspired navigation algorithm: A benchmark framework", MethodsX.
H. Ben-Gida, R. Gurka, A. Liberzon (2020), "OpenPIV-MATLAB — An open-source software for particle image velocimetry; test case: Birds' aerodynamics", SoftwareX.
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