Fat Tail in the Phytoplankton Movement Patterns and Swimming Behavior: New Insights into the Prey-Predator Interactions

Phytoplankton movement patterns and swimming behavior are important and basic topics in aquatic biology. Heavy tail distribution exists in diverse taxa and shows theoretical advantages in environments. The fat tails in the movement patterns and swimming behavior of phytoplankton in response to the food supply were studied. The log-normal distribution was used for fitting the probability density values of the movement data of Oxyrrhis marina. Results showed that obvious fat tails exist in the movement patterns of O. marina without and with positive stimulations of food supply. The algal cells tended to show a more chaotic and disorderly movement, with shorter and neat steps after adding the food source. At the same time, the randomness of turning rate, path curvature and swimming speed increased in O. marina cells with food supply. Generally, the responses of phytoplankton movement were stronger when supplied with direct prey cells rather than the cell-free filtrate. The scale-free random movements are considered to benefit the adaption of the entire phytoplankton population to varied environmental conditions. Inferentially, the movement pattern of O. marina should also have the characteristics of long-range dependence, local self-similarity and a system of fractional order.