Metachrony in zooplanktons – high speed video

Mar 25, 2015 • 10:46 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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Synchrony is the way of life; from rythems in the heart to carcadian cycles that wakes us up everyday. Sometimes synchrony is programmed and sometimes it arises by just how physical forces couple together. Beautiful example of synchrony arises from metachronal waves in arrays of beating cilia.
I was kayaking in Tamales Bay and took a drop of water from the ocean; and landed with a zooplankton in my slide. I had my foldscope and I imaged it on the beach. What was exciting was I had my iPhone and I was able to image this beautiful zooplankton in slow motion mode. Here is the result; take a look.

You can see how it’s impossible to see the beating legs initially. In high speed video, you can see the rythem and synchrony where the legs work perfectly in sync. It’s known that zooplankton use back legs to generate a flow inwards, thus bringing food to them instead if going to the food. Now, isn’t tha interesting.
Cheers
Manu