Promoter: Sam Van Wassenbergh
Supervision: Merel Van Gorp
The body of boxfish (Ostraciidae) is completely covered by fused bony plates, called the carapace. This armour provides protection against predators, but it also restricts any bending of the body making it a rigid unit. Unlike most fish that rely a lot on the undulatory motion of the body during swimming, boxfish only use their five fins. Despite this, they are incredibly good at manoeuvring. Boxfish have accurate control over their body rotations, a skill that is essential for foraging in the spatially complex coral reefs where they reside.
How do boxfish exactly use their fins to perform certain movements? In this project, you will study the kinematics of boxfish manoeuvring. You will track the movement of the fins in detail from existing high-speed recordings of Ostracion cubicus and analyse this data, looking into parameters such as the deformation of the fin surface, the fin oscillation frequency, the amplitude of the fin movement, velocities and accelerations of the fin movement, coordination between the different fins,…