Barnacle Cyprid Settlement Cue Response

Before a barnacle glues itself down for life, its cyprid larva spends hours to days walking the substrate on its antennules, sampling chemical cues at every step. This simulator renders that search as area-restricted klinokinesis over a patchy biofilm cue field, layers in the gregariousness effect of already-settled conspecifics, and commits each larva to permanent settlement according to a Hill-function dose-response probability — the same kind of cooperative, threshold-like relationship marine ecologists fit to real settlement-assay data. Watch searching cyprids slow and cluster in cue-rich patches, cement down, and seed further settlement around themselves.