Collective motion and nonequilibrium cluster formation in colonies of gliding bacteria

TL;DR

This study investigates how gliding bacteria colonies transition to collective motion through cluster formation, revealing a critical density and scale-free cluster sizes, supported by experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that self-propulsion and rod shape are sufficient to induce collective motion in bacterial colonies, with a detailed characterization of the transition.

Findings

Collective motion appears at a critical packing fraction of ~17%.

Cluster size distribution follows a scale-free power law with exponent 0.88.

Giant number fluctuations are observed during the transition.

Abstract

We characterize cell motion in experiments and show that the transition to collective motion in colonies of gliding bacterial cells confined to a monolayer appears through the organization of cells into larger moving clusters. Collective motion by non-equilibrium cluster formation is detected for a critical cell packing fraction around 17%. This transition is characterized by a scale-free power-law cluster size distribution, with an exponent $0.88\pm0.07$, and the appearance of giant number fluctuations. Our findings are in quantitative agreement with simulations of self-propelled rods. This suggests that the interplay of self-propulsion of bacteria and the rod-shape of bacteria is sufficient to induce collective motion.