Microscale patchiness controls resource acquisition in populations of foraging bacteria.

In Vibrio anguillarum foraging within dynamic, patchy nutrient landscapes, nutrient exposure and how it is distributed among cells depend strongly on the patchiness’s spatiotemporal characteristics.

• Why it matters: Measuring bacterial foraging in spatially structured nutrient environments has been difficult, limiting direct tests of how realistic microscale nutrient heterogeneity shapes acquisition.
• What they did: The study built a microfluidic arena with dynamic, patchy nutrient landscapes and tracked individual Vibrio anguillarum cells while analyzing single-cell nutrient exposure for tens of thousands of cells.
• The result: Cell trajectories showed swimming speed progressively decreased while chemotactic precision increased, producing stable nutrient exposure over time and linking patchy landscape structure to foraging outcomes.

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