Bacterial tracking of motile algae assisted by algal cell's vorticity field

Abstract

Previously published experimental work by other authors has shown that certain motile marine bacteria are able to track free swimming algae by executing a zigzag path and steering toward the algae at each turn. Here, we propose that the apparent steering behaviour could be a hydrodynamic effect, whereby an algal cell's vorticity and strain-rate fields rotate a pursuing bacterial cell in the appropriate direction. Using simplified models for the bacterial and algal cells, we numerically compute the trajectory of a bacterial cell and demonstrate the plausibility of this hypothesis.