Why don’t bacteria have eyes? Why do fish not echolocate? How far can they see? The answer to these questions is closely linked to an age old obsession of ours - size! Our analysis shows that size matters very much for how marine organisms sense their environment. We analyzed the underwater physics of various sensory systems - smelling, mechanosensing, vision, hearing, and echolocation - to find the size limits where these senses can and cannot function. Our theoretical predictions match well with observations of minimum and maximum size limits of these senses.
The paper can be found here
Martens E.A., Wadhwa N., Jacobsen N.S., Lindemann C., Andersen K.H., Visser A. (2015) Size structures sensory hierarchy in ocean life. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 282
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1346