Active modulation of surfactant driven flow instabilities by swarming bacteria

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive model for bacterial pattern formation that integrates active bacterial sensing and decision-making with fluid dynamics, improving understanding of surfactant-driven flow instabilities across species.

Contribution

It presents a new coupled model that incorporates bacterial motility and fluid dynamics, surpassing previous passive dispersal models.

Findings

Experimental behaviors not explained by previous models

Coupling bacterial motility alters pattern formation phase space

Model applicable across different bacterial species

Abstract

Models based on surfactant driven instabilities have been employed to describe pattern formation by swarming bacteria. However, by definition, such models cannot account for the effect of bacterial sensing and decision making. Here we present a more complete model for bacterial pattern formation which accounts for these effects by coupling active bacterial motility to the passive fluid dynamics. We experimentally identify behaviours which cannot be captured by previous models based on passive population dispersal and show that a more accurate description is provided by our model. It is seen that the coupling of bacterial motility to the fluid dynamics significantly alters the phase space of surfactant driven pattern formation. We also show that our formalism is applicable across bacterial species.