Investigating microscale patchiness of motile microbes under turbulence in a simulated convective mixed layer
Fig 5
Normalised distributions of microbe polar angles between 20 − 60s across all depths in three motile simulations with vswim = 100 μm s−1 and B = 1s, B = 3s and B = 5s respectively.
A polar angle of 0°C would represent orientation directly “upwards” towards the fluid surface. Mean polar angles for each simulation are marked and annotated in black. Microbes were subject to a constant balancing between their inherent tendency to orient towards the vertical (captured by the reorientation timescale parameter B) and the disorienting effect of turbulence. Faster reorientation (low B) resulted in a more vertical orientation than in the case of slower reorientation (high B), and slower reorientation also produced more homogeneous orientations. Distributions for all combinations of motility parameters are plotted in Fig H in S3 Text.