Mechanical coupling of puller and pusher active microswimmers influences motility.

Active self-propelled colloidal populations induce time-dependent three-dimensional fluid flows, which alter the rheological (viscoelastic) properties of their fluidic media. Researchers have also studied passive colloids mixed with bacterial suspensions to understand the hydrodynamic coupling between active and passive colloids. With recent developments in biological cell-driven biohybrid microswimmers, different type biological microswimmer (e.g., bacteria and algae) populations need to fluidically interact with each other in the same fluidic media, while such interactions have not been studied experimentally yet. Therefore, we report the swimming behavior of two opposite type biological microswimmer (active colloid) populations: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (C. reinhardtii) algae (puller-type microswimmers) population in co-culture with Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria (pusher-type microswimmers) population. We observed noticeable fluidic coupling deviations from the existing understanding of passive colloids mixed with bacterial suspensions previously studied in the literature. The fluidic coupling among puller- and pusher-type microswimmers led to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the fluid flow due to their opposite swimming patterns. Such coupling could be the main reason behind the shift in motility behaviors of these two opposite-type swimmer populations suspended in the same fluidic media.