Algae cause a stir in the local environment Oct 18, 2010 The
swishing actions of tiny swimming organisms play a key role in
distributing heat and nutrients throughout the world's oceans
and lakes, but these mixing effects are more complicated than we
first thought. That is according to two separate research
groups, based in the US and the UK, that have examined the fluid
disturbances that occur in the immediate vicinity of swimming
algae. Many microorganisms have evolved to be able to move
through liquids for various biological processes, including
foraging for food and reproduction, and this motion acts to stir
the fluids. While scientists have examined these processes at
relatively large scales, there is still a lack of quantitative
data on the fluid dynamics behind these processes at the
microscale. Now, a group of physicists based at the University
of Cambridge, UK, led by Knut Drescher, has succeeded in taking
a closer look through an experiment involving two types of
common algae. The first organism, Ch