QLS Seminar - Wednesday, 10 December at 11h00 "Cooperative mixing through hydrodynamic interactions in Stylonychia lemnae " by Regis Turuban

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

Dear All,

On Wednesday, 10 December at 11:00 CET,  Regis Turuban (SAMBA Lab - 
Sensing and Moving Bioinspired Artifacts Laboratory, SISSA, Trieste) 
will give a seminar titled:

*"Cooperative mixing through hydrodynamic interactions in /Stylonychia 
lemnae/"

*Abstract:
  How do aquatic microorganisms optimize feeding: is it more effective 
to swim through food, remain anchored while pumping food toward 
themselves, or join others to form a feeding colony? Despite how 
widespread and fundamental these strategies are, we still lack a 
systematic understanding of which is most efficient under different 
environmental conditions. This gap largely stems from the scarcity of 
behavioral studies combined with experimental investigations of how 
microorganism-generated flows stir the surrounding fluid and, in doing 
so, reshape nearby resource patches.
In this study, we focus on /Stylonychia lemnae /and found, first, that 
these ciliates employ chemotaxis to cluster around food patches, yet 
still remaining physically independent. Then, as many cells cluster on 
the food patch, their individual feeding flows interact, generating a 
chaotic collective flow throughout the cluster. Using a combination of 
experiments and simulations, we measured and predicted the full active 
chaotic flow. We found that it efficiently stirs and disperses food 
particles throughout the entire cluster, thereby increasing the 
effective patch size and helping still-foraging cells to locate food 
more quickly. This form of cooperative behavior highlights the 
surprising complexity of feeding strategies at the microscale.


Indico: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11239/

You are all most welcome to attend!

Best regards,

Erica

Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-22404623 (NEW PHONE NUMBER)
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail:qls at ictp.it