blwwm-2018-11-14.pdf (11.4 MB)
Emergence of phytoplankton patchiness at small scales in mild turbulence
journal contribution
posted on 2018-11-27, 09:50 authored by Rebekka E. Breier, Cristian C. Lalescu, Devin Waas, Michael Wilczek, Marco MazzaMarco MazzaPhytoplankton often encounter turbulence in their habitat. As most toxic phytoplankton species are motile, resolving the interplay of motility and turbulence has fundamental repercussions on our understanding
of their own ecology and of the entire ecosystems they inhabit. The spatial distribution of motile phytoplankton cells exhibits patchiness at distances of decimeter to millimeter scale for
numerous species with different motility strategies. The explanation of this general phenomenon remains challenging. Furthermore, hydrodynamic cell-cell interactions, which grow more relevant as the density in the patches increases, have been so far ignored. Here, we combine particle simulations and continuum theory to study the emergence of patchiness in motile microorganisms in three dimensions. By addressing the combined effects of motility, cell-cell interaction
and turbulent flow conditions, we uncover a general mechanism: the coupling of cell-cell interactions to the turbulent dynamics
favors the formation of dense patches. Identification of the important length and time scales, independently from the motility mode, allows us to elucidate a general physical mechanism underpinning the emergence of patchiness. Our results shed light on the dynamical characteristics necessary for the formation of patchiness, and complement current efforts to unravel planktonic ecological interactions.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematical Sciences
Published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVolume
115Issue
48Pages
12112 - 12117Citation
BREIER, R.E. ... et al., 2018. Emergence of phytoplankton patchiness at small scales in mild turbulence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (48), pp.12112-12117.Publisher
© The Authors. National Academy of SciencesVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-10-03Publication date
2018-11-08Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1808711115.ISSN
0027-8424eISSN
1091-6490Publisher version
Language
- en