Date

2017-09-28

Author

Sommer, T.
Danza, F.
Berg, J.
Sengupta, A.
Constantinescu, G.
Tokyay, T.
Burgmann, H.
Dressler, Y.
Steiner, O. Sepulveda
Schubert, C. J.
Tonolla, M.
Wuest, A.

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

153
views

83
downloads

Cite This

Swimming organisms can enhance mixing in their natural environments by creating eddies in their wake and by dragging water along. However, these mixing mechanisms are inefficient for microorganisms, because swimming-induced variations in velocity, temperature, and dissolved substances are evened out before they can be advected. In bioconvection, however, microorganisms induce water movement not by propulsion directly but by locally changing the fluid density, which drives convection. Observations of bioconvection have so far mainly been limited to laboratory settings. We report the first observation and quantification of bioconvection within a stratified natural water body. Using in situ measurements, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the bacterium Chromatium okenii is capable of mixing 0.3 to 1.2m thick water layers at around 12m water depth in the Alpine Lake Cadagno (Switzerland). As many species are capable of driving bioconvection, this phenomenon potentially plays a role in species distributions and influences large-scale phenomena like algal blooms.

Subject Keywords

General Earth and Planetary Sciences, Geophysics

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/68580

Collections

Department of Civil Engineering, Article