Journal article
Effective dynamics of microorganisms that interact with their own trail
- Abstract:
- Like ants, some microorganisms are known to leave trails on surfaces to communicate. We explore how trail-mediated self-interaction could affect the behavior of individual microorganisms when diffusive spreading of the trail is negligible on the timescale of the microorganism using a simple phenomenological model for an actively moving particle and a finite-width trail. The effective dynamics of each microorganism takes on the form of a stochastic integral equation with the trail interaction appearing in the form of short-term memory. For moderate coupling strength below an emergent critical value, the dynamics exhibits effective diffusion in both orientation and position after a phase of superdiffusive reorientation. We report experimental verification of a seemingly counterintuitive perpendicular alignment mechanism that emerges from the model.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 2.9MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.038101
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society
- Journal:
- Physical Review Letters More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2016-07-11
- Acceptance date:
- 2016-06-15
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1079-7114
- ISSN:
-
0031-9007
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:629438
- UUID:
-
uuid:4b2bd70f-2e14-42ca-97dd-b77f5568e2e6
- Local pid:
-
pubs:629438
- Source identifiers:
-
629438
- Deposit date:
-
2016-06-23
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- American Physical Society
- Copyright date:
- 2016
- Notes:
- © 2016 American Physical Society. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from APS at: [10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.038101]
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record