Short-term Memory Effects in the Phototactic Behavior of Microalgae: Model

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11 Sept 2024

Authors:

(1) Taha Laroussi, Laboratoire d’Hydrodynamique (LadHyX), CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France;

(2) Mojtaba Jarrahi, Universit´e Paris-Saclay, CNRS, FAST, 91405 Orsay, France;

(3) Gabriel Amselem, Laboratoire d’Hydrodynamique (LadHyX), CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France.

Abstract and Introduction

Methods

Results

Model

Discussion, Acknowledgements and References

Supplementary Material

IV. MODEL

A prediction of the model is that algae can switch behavior successively from positive phototaxis, to backand-forth, to negative phototaxis before reverting back to positive phototaxis. Such is the case for three consecutive stimuli of I0 = 0.02 µmol · m−2 ·s −1 spaced by 90 s and a pause of 30 min before the fourth stimulus, see Fig. 8d.

This switch through all phototactic behaviors requires a precise tuning of both the light intensity and the waiting times, which is experimentally tedious. We were however able to experimentally observe the switch from positive to back-and-forth behavior and from back-and-forth to negative behavior, see Supp. Fig. 5.

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license.