Formation, collective motion, and merging of macroscopic bacterial aggregates
Fig 5
(A) Snapshots of a 10 mm x 9mm subregion of the plates at T = 17.5 h and T = 31.5 h. Two instances of two-aggregate merging events are highlighted in the boxed regions. The trajectories are plotted in blue for non-merging aggregates and in red for mergers of two aggregates. (B) Relative distance vs. time for all merging processes, color coded with total aggregate area. (C) The acceleration is positively correlated with the total aggregate area (spearman’s rho 0.30 and p-value 0.040). (D) Distribution of aggregate speed for two-spot mergers and non-merging spots. The average (shown with a dashed line) illustrates that aggregates that eventually merge, on average, move faster. (E) Distribution of trajectory distance divided by displacement for two-spot mergers and non-merging spots. On average, the path taken by aggregates that eventually merge is more direct.