Journal
BULLETIN OF MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY
Volume 69, Issue 1, Pages 417-431Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11538-005-9038-8
Keywords
swimming bacteria; marine snow; encounter rate
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Sinking aggregates provide important nutrient-rich environments for marine bacteria. Quantifying the rate at which motile bacteria colonize such aggregations is important in understanding the microbial loop in the pelagic food web. In this paper, a simple analytical model is presented to predict the rate at which bacteria undergoing a random walk encounter a sinking aggregate. The model incorporates the flow field generated by the sinking aggregate, the swimming behavior of the bacteria, and the interaction of the flow with the swimming behavior. An expression for the encounter rate is computed in the limit of large Peclet number when the random walk can be approximated by a diffusion process. Comparison with an individual-based numerical simulation is also given.
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