Water Movements Can Shape Fish Evolution

(anyone else find this story a bit strange?)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100204144813.htm

Water Movements Can Shape Fish Evolution

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010) — Researchers from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology have found that the hydrodynamic environment of fish can shape their physical form and swimming style. The research, available on the Journal of Experimental Biology Web site, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation's National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics.

Catch a glimpse of a fish's body shape, and you can often guess how speedy it is. Tuna and mackerel look as if they should outpace frilly reef fish and eels. But how have all of these diverse body shapes evolved? Have fish bodies been shaped by the hydrodynamics of their environment or did they evolve for other reasons?

Turning to computational fish for answers, professor of Civil Engineering Fotis Sotiropoulos, along with postdoctoral researcher Iman Borazjani, from the university's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory decided to race hybrid and realistic fish in a massive parallel computer cluster to find out what influence the aquatic environment has had on fish shapes and swimming techniques.....

The method could be adapted to study how a fluid environment molds the evolution of other organisms and to design robots that would swim at different speeds or in water of different viscosities, the researchers say.

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