Pulsatile ventilation flow in polychaete Alitta succinea burrows

Abstract

In aquatic sediments, active ventilation of burrows is an important component of sediment metabolism, transporting solutes across the sediment–water interface. Within a burrow, the temporal and spatial structure of the flow velocity can dictate the flux of solutes across the burrow walls. However, it is difficult to measure the fine-scale flow dynamics within a burrow due to the opacity of marine sediments. Here, we allowed a nereid polychaete Alitta succinea, a cosmopolitan deposit feeder found in brackish to marine soft sediments, to construct burrows in a transparent, elastic sediment analog. This allowed the measurement of the temporal velocity structure of flow in the burrow using particle tracking velocimetry. We find that the flow within the burrow of this piston-pumping polychaete is unsteady and that oscillations in flow velocity are damped with distance along the tube. We also show that the flow velocity in a tube scales with worm size. Conversely, neither the unsteadiness of flow oscillations nor the stroke frequency of the worm pump scale with worm size.