Session MD - Bio-Fluid Dynamics X.
MIXED session, Tuesday afternoon, November 23
Fifth Avenue Room, Westin Seattle
Bioconvection occurs when microorganisms that are denser than the ambient fluid swim on average upwards, generating an overturning instability. Bioconvection may be an important mechanism for vertical and horizontal aggregation of otherwise dispersed populations. In the case of toxic algae, concentration by bioconvection may have direct ecological and human effects. However, it is not known whether conditions that favor bioconvection commonly exist in nature. We quantified in the laboratory the conditions for bioconvection by Heterosigma akashiwo, a highly motile 10 \mum alga that forms toxic blooms worldwide. Cells formed extensive convective patterns, when present in concentrations comparable to those found in a natural bloom (100s cells/ml), even within a salinity-stratified water column. We quantified both the \mum scale swimming behavior of individual cells in still water, and the trajectories of cells in a descending bioconvective plume at the cm scale. We present a continuous-time Markov model derived from these data that predicts the evolution of cell concentration during bioconvection and compare the model to observed patterns of bioconvection.