Abstract

Microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature and technology. They inhabit diverse environments ranging from small river tributaries and lakes to oceans, as well as wastewater treatment plants and food manufacturing. In many of these environments, microorganisms coexist with settling particles. Here, we investigate the effects of microbial activity (swimming E. coli) on the settling dynamics of passive colloidal particles using particle tracking methods. Our results reveal the existence of two distinct regimes in the correlation length scale (L_u) and the effective diffusivity of the colloidal particles (D_eff), with increasing bacterial concentration (φ_b). At low φ_b, the parameters L_u and D_eff monotonically increases with increasing φ_b. Beyond a critical φ_b, second regime is found in which both D_eff and L_u are independent of φ_b. We demonstrate that the transition between these regimes is characterized by the emergence of bioconvection. We use experimentally-measured particle-scale quantities (L_u, D_eff) to predict the critical bacterial concentration for the diffusion-bioconvection transition.