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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 16: Poster IV

BP 16.15: Poster

Dienstag, 17. März 2020, 14:00–16:00, P2/EG

Emergent activity of motile phytoplankton in nutrient landscapes — •Francesco Danza and Anupam Sengupta — Physics of Living Matter Group, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Phytoplankton, microscale photosynthetic organisms that constitute base of most of the aquatic food webs, inhabit dynamic environments where nutrients, alongside light and fluid flow, mediate phytoplankton activity, fitness and succession. Nutrient availability has long been associated with plankton physiology, which due to the shifting environmental trends, is undergoing a major makeover. Currently we lack a biophysical framework that could link nutrient availability to phytoplankton behavior, and crucially, predict if motile species could thrive in shifting nutrient conditions. Using a combination of micro-scale imaging, microbiology and fluid dynamic models, we investigate how nutrient availability regulates single-cell physiology and motility, and scale it up to uncover emergent collective behavior of phytoplankton populations. By quantifying the biophysical traits over ecologically relevant nutrient levels, we extract the time-scales over which phytoplankton actively regulate swimming and morphological characteristics, thus shedding light on the finely tuned biophysical mechanisms that equip them to tackle spatial and temporal heterogeneity of nutrient landscapes. Beyond the ecological context, our results propose local nutrient levels as a handle to control the activity of motile phytoplankton species, promising an exciting model of motile active matter where spontaneous changes in motility and morphology trigger a rich phase space over different cell concentrations.