Turbulent Fluid Acceleration Generates Clusters of Gyrotactic Microorganisms

Lillo, F. De; Cencini, Massimo; Durham, William M.; Barry, Michael; Stocker, Roman; Climent, Éric; Boffetta, G.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.044502

Cited by 106 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…Recent works have shown that gyrotaxis also produces clustering at very small scales (comparable with the Kolmogorov scale) in nonstationary turbulent flows [17][18][19][20]. In this case cells are found to accumulate on fractal dynamical clusters characterized by a fractal dimension which depends on the cell and flow parameters [17,18,21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Scale-dependent colocalization in a population of gyrotactic swimmers

2017

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We study the small scale clustering of gyrotactic swimmers transported by a turbulent flow, when the intrinsic variability of the swimming parameters within the population is considered. By means of extensive numerical simulations, we find that the variety of the population introduces a characteristic scale R * in its spatial distribution. At scales smaller than R * the swimmers are homogeneously distributed, while at larger scales an inhomogeneous distribution is observed with a fractal dimension close to what observed for a monodisperse population characterized by mean parameters. The scale R * depends on the dispersion of the population and it is found to scale linearly with the standard deviation both for a bimodal and for a Gaussian distribution. Our numerical results, which extend recent findings for a monodisperse population, indicate that in principle it is possible to observe small scale, fractal clustering in a laboratory experiment with gyrotactic cells.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Scale-dependent colocalization in a population of gyrotactic swimmers

2017

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“…Croze et al (2013) investigated the dispersion of motile microorganisms in laminar and turbulent channel flows. Lillo et al (2014) reported the influences of acceleration of flow on the formation of algal patches in a rotating cylindrical tube. Martin et al (2016) observed the focusing of C. reinhardtii in the flow through a microchannel under the combined action of vorticity and phototaxis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms in low-Reynolds-number flow: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Chen

Zeng

et al. 2017

Energ. Ecol. Environ.

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The swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms are significant to understand the ecological activities in lakes, rivers and oceans. The swimming velocity of a typical motile microorganism, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, was measured for both still water and low-Reynolds-number flow, based on a microfluidic system. Results show that the swimming speed is subject to Gaussian distribution for the still water, and corresponding mean swimming speed is 41 lm/s. The streamwise mean swimming velocity, 35 lm/s, in the moving water is slightly less than that in the still water. It is also shown that the swimming direction in the horizontal plane is dominated by cell randomness for the still water, and 80% of the cells are aligned with the ambient flow when the flow velocity exceeds 333 lm/s. The standard deviation of swimming direction and the percent of swimming direction in the streamwise direction can reach a stable status with the increase of the flow velocity.

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“…We propose a detailed quantitative description of the experimental dynamics and stationary regimes of what we call photofocusing [9] coupled to an analytical and numerical treatment of the problem in a spirit similar to [10,11].…”

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confidence: 99%

Photofocusing: Light and flow of phototactic microswimmer suspension

et al. 2016

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We explore in this paper the phenomenon of photofocusing: a coupling between flow vorticity and biased swimming of microalgae toward a light source that produces a focusing of the microswimmer suspension. We combine experiments that investigate the stationary state of this phenomenon as well as the transition regime with analytical and numerical modeling. We show that the experimentally observed scalings on the width of the focalized region and the establishment length as a function of the flow velocity are well described by a simple theoretical model.

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Turbulent Fluid Acceleration Generates Clusters of Gyrotactic Microorganisms

Cited by 106 publications

References 36 publications

Scale-dependent colocalization in a population of gyrotactic swimmers

Scale-dependent colocalization in a population of gyrotactic swimmers

Swimming characteristics of gyrotactic microorganisms in low-Reynolds-number flow: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Photofocusing: Light and flow of phototactic microswimmer suspension

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