CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage ofevanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is reasonable to assume that some microorganisms are able to increase their nutrient intake by increasing their speed v. We formulate a model that uses the concept of internal energy depot to investigate this hypothesis, postulating that the nutrient absorption rate is a linear function of the microorganism speed. Using realistic values of the parameters, we show that the resulting increment in the speed can be substantial. We find the stationary solutions to the equations of motion and analyze their stability and the influence of thermal noise using various forms for the energy-transfer function.