Related papers: Microbial range expansions on liquid substrates
Biofilms are bacterial aggregates that grow on moist surfaces. Thin homogeneous biofilms naturally formed on the walls of conducts may serve as biosensors, providing information on the status of microsystems (MEMS) without disrupting them.…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
Microbes providing public goods are widespread in nature despite running the risk of being exploited by free-riders. However, the precise ecological factors supporting cooperation are still puzzling. Following recent experiments, we…
The ubiquitous existence of microbial communities marks the importance of understanding how species interact within the community to coexist and their spatial organization. We study a two-species mutualistic cross-feeding model through a…
Bacterial communities such as biofilms are widely recognised as being important for survival and persistence of bacteria in harsh environments. Mechanistic models of biofilm growth indicate that the way in which the surface is seeded can…
Proliferating cell collectives often develop an active growth layer near their boundary that regulates expansion and morphology, as observed in systems ranging from bacterial biofilms to epithelial tissues and tumor spheroids. While such…
Local generation of vorticity occurs in rotating density-stratified fluids as fluid parcels move radially, expanding or contracting with respect to the background density stratification. Thermal convection in rotating 2D equatorial…
Larval settlement in wave-dominated, nearshore environments is the most critical life stage for a vast array of marine invertebrates, yet it is poorly understood and virtually impossible to observe in situ. Using a custom-built flume tank…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Many bacteria live in natural and clinical environments with abundant macromolecular polymers. Macromolecular fluids commonly display viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian rheological behavior; it is unclear how these complex-fluid properties…
A systematic investigation of the phase separation dynamics in self-assembled multi-component bilayer fluid vesicles and open membranes is presented. We use large-scale dissipative particle dynamics to explicitly account for solvent,…
The behaviour of a viscous drop squeezed between two horizontal planes is treated by both theory and experiment. When the squeezing force F is constant and surface tension is neglected, the theory predicts ultimate growth of the radius a~…
Fungal colonies are able to exhibit different morphologies depending on the enviromental conditions. This allows them to cope with and adapt to external changes. When grown in solid or semi-solid media the bulk of the colony is compact and…
A packed community of exponentially proliferating microbes will spread in size exponentially. However, due to nutrient depletion, mechanical constraints, or other limitations, exponential proliferation is not indefinite, and the spreading…
We investigate the nature of genetic drift acting at the leading edge of range expansions, building on recent results in [Hallatschek et al., Proc.\ Natl.\ Acad.\ Sci., \textbf{104}(50): 19926 - 19930 (2007)]. A well mixed population of two…
We consider the process of convective dissolution in homogeneous and isotropic porous media. The flow is unstable due to the presence of a solute that induces a density difference responsible for driving the flow. The mixing dynamics is…
A rest fluid displaced by a less viscous fluid in a porous medium triggers the so-called Saffman-Taylor instability at their contact front and hence forms complicated finger-like patterns. When the two fluids are miscible, the surface…
We investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…
Viscous fingering patterns can form at the interface between two immiscible fluids confined in the gap between a pair of flat plates; whenever the fluid with lower viscosity displaces the one of higher viscosity the interface is unstable.…
In 1D evolution models of gas giant planets, an outer convection zone advances into the interior as the surface cools, and multiple convective layers form beneath that convective front. To study layer formation below an outer convection…