Energetic Advantages of Pause-Travel At Low Speeds

Some larval fish species do not swim continuously but forage using intermittent locomotion pattern which consist of relatively high speed swimming interspersed by pauses. This type of locomotion is known as pause-travel. In this paper, a mathematical model that examines the advantages of pause-travel over continuous swimming is developed. The results of the present calculations show that pause-travel is an efficient strategy to adopt over certain range of travel speeds. The results also show that the advantage of using this mode of swimming will increases as the size of the larva increases.