Forces and symmetry breaking of a living meso-swimmer

Abstract

Swimming is ubiquitous in nature and crucial for the survival of a wide range of organisms. The physics of swimming at the viscosity-dominated microscale and inertia-dominated macroscale is well studied. However, in between lies a complicated mesoscale with swimmers affected by non-linear and time-dependent fluid mechanics. The intricate motility strategies, combined with complex and periodically changing body shapes add extra challenges for accurate meso-swimming modelling. Here, we have further developed the micropipette force sensor to directly probe the swimming forces of the meso-organism Artemia. Through deep neural network-based image analysis, we show how Artemia achieves an increased propulsive force by increasing its level of time-reversal symmetry breaking. We present a universal force-based scaling law for a wide range of micro- to meso-organisms with different body shapes, swimming strategies, and level of inertia at the mesoscale. These results capture fundamental aspects of biological meso-swimming dynamics and provide guidance for future biomimicking meso-robot designs.