Behavioral stochastic resonance: how the noise from a Daphnia swarm enhances individual prey capture by juvenile paddlefish.

Zooplankton emit weak electric fields into the surrounding water that originate from their own muscular activities associated with swimming and feeding. Juvenile paddlefish prey upon single zooplankton by detecting and tracking these weak electric signatures. The passive electric sense in this fish is provided by an elaborate array of electroreceptors, Ampullae of Lorenzini, spread over the surface of an elongated rostrum. We have previously shown that the fish use stochastic resonance to enhance prey capture near the detection threshold of their sensory system. However, stochastic resonance requires an external source of electrical noise in order to function. A swarm of plankton, for example Daphnia, can provide the required noise. We hypothesize that juvenile paddlefish can detect and attack single Daphnia as outliers in the vicinity of the swarm by using noise from the swarm itself. From the power spectral density of the noise plus the weak signal from a single Daphnia, we calculate the signal-to-noise ratio, Fisher information and discriminability at the surface of the paddlefish's rostrum. The results predict a specific attack pattern for the paddlefish that appears to be experimentally testable. Copyright 2002 Academic Press.