title: The energetics and scaling of search strategies in bacteria.
abstract: The influence of body size on the energetic cost of movement is well studied in animals but has been rarely investigated in bacteria. Here, I calculate the cost of four chemotactic strategies for different-sized bacteria by adding the costs of their locomotion and reorientation. Size differences of 0.1 microm result in 100,000-fold changes in the energetic cost of chemotaxis. The exact cost for any given size is a nonlinear function of flagella length, the minimum speed necessary to detect and respond to a signal, and the gradient of the signal. These parameters are interlinked in such a way that body size and strategy are tightly coupled to particular environmental gradients, offering avenues for explaining and exploring diversity and competition. The analysis here has implications beyond bacteria. Power-law regression through the minimum costs of transport for different kinds of chemotaxis has the same slope as that for swimming animals, suggesting a universal allometric equation for all swimming organisms.
authors: School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO 2100, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia.
authors: James G
authors: JG
authors: Mitchell