Ecological and social modeling for migration and adhesion pattern of a benthic diatom

Abstract

A biofilm is an aggregation of microorganisms that involves the adhesion of cells to each other on a surface. Because of their ecological advantages and disadvantages, it is important to understand the rules that govern the formation and evolution of diatom biofilms. In this paper, the cell migration of the benthic diatom Navicula sp. was quantitatively investigated, and the results show that the cumulative migration angles and step lengths can be fitted with a normal distribution and an exponential distribution, respectively. These statistical parameters were used to simulate the adhesion pattern of the diatoms in the NetLogo platform to better understand the cellular interactions and formation of the diatom biofilm. Variance-to-mean ratio (VMR) was used as an index of dispersion, and an analysis of the significance in the differences of VMR between the in vitro measurements and the simulated results was conducted. By comparing the simulation results and observed experiments, the parameters characterizing cellular interactions were adjusted. As a conclusion, the clustered pattern shown in the in vitro experiments is verified to be caused by both the cellular interactions and the cell reproduction.