Author ORCID Identifier
Kelli E. Gutierrez: 0009-0006-9729-1781
Becca Thomases: 0000-0001-8502-8915
Paulo E. Arratia: 0000-0002-2566-2663
Robert D. Guy: 0000-0002-0602-7015
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Publication Title
Philosophical Transactions A
Abstract
Many different microswimmers propel themselves using flagella that beat periodically. The shape of the flagellar beat and swimming speed have been observed to change with fluid rheology. We quantify changes in the flagellar waveforms of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in response to changes in fluid viscosity using (i) shape mode analysis and (ii) a full swimmer simulation to analyse how shape changes affect the swimming speed and to explore the dimensionality of the shape space. By decomposing the gait into the time‑independent mean shape and the time‑varying stroke, we find that the flagellar mean shape substantially changes in response to viscosity, while the changes in the time‑varying stroke are more subtle. Using the swimmer simulation, we quantify how the swimming speed is affected by the dimensionality of the flagellar shape reconstruction, and we show that the observed
change in swimming speed with viscosity is explained by the variations in mean flagellar shape and beat frequency, while the changes in swimming speed from
the different time‑varying strokes are on the scale of variation between cells.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Biological fluid microorganism locomotion, dynamics: emerging directions’.
Keywords
microorganism locomotion, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, computational biofluid dynamics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.6084/ m9.figshare.c.7942480
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
© 2025 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society
Version
Version of Record
Recommended Citation
Gutierrez, Kelli E.; Thomases, Becca; Arratia, Paulo E.; and Guy, Robert D., "Quantification of Changes with Combined Shape Mode Analysis and Swimming Simulations" (2025). Mathematics Sciences: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/mth_facpubs/197