Lindsay Waldrop
I study the way that crabs use their first antennae (antennules) to gather information from chemical signals. Each antennule has a compact tuft of chemosensory hairs (aesthetascs) that, when moved rapidly back and forth through water, captures discrete odor samples of the surrounding environment.
Discrete odor sampling (sniffing) has been previously studied in several species of crustacean, but little is known about the effects of ontogeny on this process. I am interested in characterizing the ability to sniff during growth in crabs, from larvae to adults.