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Euchaeta rimana, a pelagic marine copepod, roams a 3-dimensional environment and its antennular setal sensors are oriented to detect water-borne signals in 3 dimensions. When the copepod moves through water or moves water around itself, it creates a fluid disturbance distinct from the ambient fluid motion. As it swims and hovers, the copepod's laminar feeding current takes the unstable nature of small-scale turbulence, organizes it, and makes the local domain a familiar territory within which signals can be specified in time and space. The streamlines betray both the 3-dimensional spatial location (x, y, z) as well as the time (t) separating a signal caught in the feeding current and the copepod receptor-giving the copepod early warning of the approach of a prey, predator, or mate. The copepod reduces the complexity of its environment by fixing information from a turbulent field into a simpler, more defined laminar field. We quantitatively analysed small-scale fluid deformations created by copepods to document the strength of the signal. Physiological and behavioral tests confirm (a) that these disturbances are relevant signals transmitting information between zooplankters and (b) that hydrodynamically conspicuous structures, such as feeding currents, wakes, and vibrations, elicit specific responses from copepods. Since fluid mechanical signals do elicit responses, copepods shape their fluid motion to advertise or to conceal their hydrodynamic presence. When swimming, a copepod barely leaves a trace in the water; the animal generates its flow and advances into the area from which the water is taken, covering up its tracks with the velocity gradient it creates around itself. When escaping, it sheds conspicuous vortices. Prey caught in a flow field expose their location by hopping. These escape hops shed jet-like wakes detected by copepod mechanoreceptors. Copepods recognize the wakes and respond adaptively.

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Using laser optics to illuminate high-resolution video-recordings, we revealed behavioural mechanisms through which males of the calanoid copepod speciesTemora longicornis locate females. Males of T. longicornis swam at signi¢cantly faster speeds than females along more sinuous routes, possibly re£ecting adaptations to increase encounter with females. Upon approaching within 2 mm (i.e. two body lengths) of a female's swimming path, males accelerated to signi¢cantly higher pursuit speeds. Pursuit trajectories closely traced the trajectories of females, suggesting that males were following detectable trails created by swimming females. Males of T. longicornis detected female trails up to at least 10-s old, and tracked trails for distances exceeding 13 cm, or 130 body lengths. Females were positioned up to 34.2 mm away from males (i.e. reactive distance) when males initiated`mate-tracking'. It was always the males of T. longicornis that detected and pursued mates. In rare events, males pursued other males. Behavioural £exibility was exhibited by males during mate-tracking. Males generally tracked the trails of`cruising' (i.e. fast-swimming) females with high accuracy, while the pursuits of`hovering' (i.e. slow-swimming) females often included`casting' behaviour, in which males performed sharp turns in zigzag patterns within localized volumes. This casting by males suggested that hovering females create more dispersed trails than cruising females. Casting behaviour also was initiated by males near locations where females had hopped, suggesting that rapid movements by females disrupt the continuity of their trails. Males were ine¤cient at choosing initial tracking directions, following trails in the incorrect direction in 27 of the 67 (40%) mating pursuits observed. Males usually attempted to correct misguided pursuits by`back-tracking' along trails in the correct direction. Males were observed to detect and track their own previous trajectories without females present, suggesting the possibility that males follow their own trails during back-tracking. Observations of males tracking their own trails and the trails of other males bring into question the speci¢city of trails as a mechanism promoting reproductive isolation among co-occurring planktonic copepods.