title: 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 time scale 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 a 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.
authors.affiliation: Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: W Till
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Kranz
authors.affiliation: Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Anatolij
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gelimson
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering, Ministry of Education, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.|Bioengineering Department, Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, California Nano Systems Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095-1600, USA.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Bioengineering Department, Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, California Nano Systems Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095-1600, USA.
authors.forename: Gerard C L
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ramin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Golestanian
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants; D001419:Bacteria; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D004058:Diffusion; D008954:Models, Biological; D009949:Orientation