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Updated: May 23, 2026

Monitoring Spatial Segregation in Surface Colonizing Microbial Populations
Published on: October 29, 2016
Collective motion and nonequilibrium cluster formation in colonies of gliding bacteria
Fernando Peruani1, Jörn Starruss, Vladimir Jakovljevic
1Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, UMR CNRS 7351, Parc Valrose, F-06108 Nice Cedex 02, France.
Abstract:
We characterize cell motion in experiments and show that the transition to collective motion in colonies of gliding bacterial cells confined to a monolayer appears through the organization of cells into larger moving clusters. Collective motion by nonequilibrium cluster formation is detected for a critical cell packing fraction around 17%. This transition is characterized by a scale-free power-law cluster-size distribution, with an exponent 0.88±0.07, and the appearance of giant number fluctuations. Our findings are in quantitative agreement with simulations of self-propelled rods. This suggests that the interplay of self-propulsion and the rod shape of bacteria is sufficient to induce collective motion.
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