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Bacterial trails and microzones around marine aggregates
This artwork illustrates bacterial trails towards nutrient-releasing marine aggregates. The pseudo-colored aggregate consists of tiny crude oil droplets embedded in a matrix of microbes and biopolymers. The variation in color intensity around the aggregate abstractly represents a eutrophic microzone of high bacterial abundance. In this work, we develop a data-driven model to determine under what conditions such bacterial microzones may reshape the nutrient fields. The multiple versions of the core pattern are inspired by Andy Warhol's style and represent the rich diversity in particulate, chemical, and bacterial species of the oceans. Kapellos et al
Image Credit: George E Kapellos