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Manta birostris mouth. Credit: Steve Kajiura
New Oregon State University research shows manta rays exert incredible pressure on tiny food from sips of seawater, which could be the key to better filtration in a variety of commercial applications. .
Posted today Scientists progress, the results explain that manta rays filter zooplankton, mesoplankton and microcrustaceans with an apparatus different from anything previously observed in any biological or industrial system.
"The most common type of filter is a strainer, where a fluid containing particles passes through a membrane whose pores are smaller than particles," said Jim Strother, assistant professor of integrative biology at OSU. College of Science. .
Screen filters include everything from a kitchen strainer that filters pasta to membrane filters that produce ultrapure water. Other filtering mechanisms are hydrosol filtration, such as fiber filters in HVAC systems and cyclonic filtration, used in bagless vacuum cleaners.
"There are many types of filters used for many purposes around the world, but they all rely on a few basic mechanisms," said Strother, who collaborated with corresponding author Misty Paig-Tran and Raj Divi of Cal State Fullerton.
The manta rays, close relatives of sharks that can measure over 20 feet in diameter, eat by bringing plankton-rich water into their mouths when they swim. They filter and ingest the plankton, then rinse the rest of the water through their gills.
Manta rays. Credit: Misty Paig-Tran
Many filtration systems tend to become clogged as they collect everything they filter, but manta rays use leaf-shaped lobe gratings to reject the filter's food particles.
The water that passes over the lobes creates a complex pattern of swirling swirls and the food particles in the stream touch the lobes and move away from them. The configuration allows the fish to keep food organisms much smaller than the pores.
"Manta rays seem to use a new mechanism to filter out fluid particles," Strother said. "Their filtering apparatus has a special structure that allows the plankton particles to ricochet off the filter and concentrate in the oral cavity, so that the fish can then ingest them." As the particles are repelled by the filter but are not captured, the filter has several highly desirable properties, including the fact that it can operate at high flow rates and that it is extremely resistant to clogging.
"This article establishes the basic mechanism and we are currently studying the possibility of adapting this mechanism to technical systems," Strother said. "For example, one of the future directions is to determine if this can be applied to wastewater treatment to cope with the emerging threat of microplastic pollution."
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More information:
R.V. Divi el al., "Manta rays feed using ricochet separation, a new non-clogging filter mechanism" Scientists progress (2018). DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.aat9533, advance.sciencemag.org/content/4/9/eaat9533
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